Drenched
by shike77
Summary: KOTOR II: Spoilers Pazaak is good for getting to know your shipmates. But Atton Rand might be biting off more than he can chew while trying to understand and protect the exiled Jedi who is determined to find answers to her own past. Chapter V up.
1. Pazaak

**Drenched  
**_by shike77_

**Spoilers**: I think so. I'm pretty sure they're somewhere in there.

**POV**: Atton

**Genre**: Angst. Or something. Continue? Maybe. If it needs more, I'll take it farther. I don't think so right now.

**Production Songs**: 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' and 'Wake me up When September Ends' by Green Day.

**Notes**: Uh… I don't know. For all of you that have played and finished KOTOR II… Well, you'd probably understand why I wrote this. _::throws a rock at the lack of closure::_ I started writing it after Atton's Past thing came up. _::cough::_ The entire point of this was, originally, to show you all how much I hate Disciple (pansy). I think it evolved beyond that after I wrapped the game, though (at 2:00 in the morning).

This is more about Saer than Atton, sadly enough. As much as I've been writing her, I don't feel like I've been giving her character the justice it deserves. I decided to give the two of them a comfortable standing with each other. Atton thinks he understands her (heh, you wish), and then… well, you'll see.

This takes place about… say, Dantooine was done first, then the first half of Onderron, and now we're off to Nar Shadda. And I apologize in advance for the utter butchery of Disciple's character. I realize that he wouldn't act like that, but… well, then things wouldn't be interesting. _::malicious grin::_

* * *

"Okay, Saer, I need to ask you something."

The blonde woman grunted at him in reply, placing a Pazaak card on the floor. A 19—pretty close, but not good enough…

Atton pulled a card off the top of the deck and placed it next to the ones on his side of the floor. The Ebon Hawk had no Pazaak tables, not suprisingly, and Atton had to be nearby the console in case of some major emergency or other, so if they wanted to play Pazaak to pass the time, they had to do it on the floor in the cockpit. Which they usually did—Saer rarely had anything to do around the ship when she wasn't helping Bao Dur repair something or working on that busted HK unit. She tended to avoid the old hag and Disciple like the plague, but was prone to finding ways to help everyone else out whenever she could. And as such it was no small victory (over Disciple, certainly) that she chose to spend a good deal of time holed up in the cockpit paying Pazaak with him. He placed a – 5 on the floor, then gathered the cards to shuffle the deck.

"It's not that I'm complaining, or anything…" he shrugged, placing the deck on the floor, "because I just love the time we spend together. Quality, friendship-building time, it is."

Her only response was to give him that, 'get-to-the-point-or-I'll-kill-you' look she'd perfected ages ago. He grinned sheepishly as she drew a card from the deck and placed it on the floor, then signaled for him to go. He drew a card and placed it on the floor. She was at eight, he was at one.

"… And, well, being in a room with you and the door closed _might_, coincidentally, be yet another personal fantasy of mine, if even a _little_ incomplete…"

She gave him that look again as she drew another card and placed it on the floor.

"… But I have to ask. Why have we been sitting here for three hours playing Pazaak with the door closed? Because if my manly charm's finally won through to you, then I think you should just tell me."

When she didn't say anything, he continued on, thinking she was way too glum for her own good. She looked unsettled—far too uncomfortable, and not even completely there. He'd practically let her win six matches in a row and she hadn't even noticed. "I mean, I know it's difficult for you Jedi women to learn to accept these things—"

"It's Disciple."

Atton's mood soured. _What's that good for nothing son of a viper kinrath done now?_

As if she'd caught that, she sighed. "No, he hasn't _done_ anything. Not yet, anyway. He's just…"

_An ass? Trying too hard? Obvious? Sticking his nose where it doesn't belong?_

She shook her head. Like she was reading his mind or something. "I didn't think his… 'history' involving my brief appearance would have been so bad, when he told me about it…"

She'd told him about that while she was helping him examine the _Ebon Hawk_ after the attack near Onderron for damage. She had apparently trained Disciple for a brief period of time, among a group of other Jedi wannabe's, before heading off to the war—and, after her exile, the idiot had left the Order as well. At that revelation, his attitude towards the man had soured a considerable amount. He hated to feel overly protective of Saer—you didn't have to be a genius to see that she didn't need it—but he almost felt like Disciple was walking in on his turf.

She sighed, shaking her head as she drew a card and placed it with barely a glance at it. She was at eighteen. "Unfortunately, it's worse than I thought. Damn, Atton, I think he's becoming obsessed with me. Normally, I'd be able to ignore it, but he's harassing T3 so he can constantly see the recording of my trial, Bao Dur tells me that he's haunting the security room, watching me over the cameras—and recording that, for when I'm not on the ship!" She shook her head, watching Atton draw a card. He was at five.

"Just boot him off the ship," Atton replied, watching her draw a one. She placed her hand in the 'stand' position as he continued. "He doesn't really _do_ anything for us, anyway—well, except act all high and mighty. Y'know, I _told_ him you don't fall for the hero act-"

"When?" she interrupted, frowning as he drew another card. "I don't remember being part of that conversation."

… Right. He hadn't told her about that. Mainly because he'd practically threatened Disciple, telling him to back off. Hell, the man deserved it. It made little sense, however; Saer had shown little interest in either of them beyond casual friendship, so why was he so worried about Disciple winning her over? And why did he feel so protective of a person who had saved _his_ ass more times than he could count?

"Uh, yeah, that was on Dxun. Right after you all came back from the Mandalorian camp. You were taking about three hours in the shower at that point in time."

Saer winced. "The bathroom cameras _are_ encoded, right?"

"Trust me, the trash compactor changes the codes daily."

She looked about to express relief, for a moment, but stopped. A second later she sighed, running a hand through her hair—it wasn't forced into a messy braid, a sure sign that the entire Hutt race was soon to renounce their evil ways and start donating mass amounts of credits to their local charity.

"I am _not_ going to ask how you found that out. Ever."

Atton grinned sheepishly. "Hey, once a guy sees a woman half-naked, he's just _dying_ to see the rest of her." Drawing a card and placing it, he added slyly, "Did you know that you have sexy hips?"

The look she sent his way was priceless. "This coming from the one about to lose something in between the legs if he keeps this up."

Atton scowled at her playfully, then glanced over his cards. He was at 13… After a quick glance at his hand to see if anything helped, he drew again. Wound up with a 23. No way he could pull himself out of that one and still win. He gathered the cards and shuffled them again as she picked up her hand.

"Anyway," he continued, placing the deck on the floor, "Like I said, just kick him out if he's too much. What does he do, anyway? Sits around and makes theories about what's attacking us all day. Not the most useful of people to have around."

Saer shook her head at him, some shorter strands of her hair slipping past her ear. She pushed it back, irritably, but it fell hopelessly back into place again. She sent it a glare, then drew a card. She had a 10.

"I don't think that's such a good idea, Atton," she replied, a melancholy edge to her voice—barely even there, but Atton knew her well enough to find it. He frowned, drawing a card and placing it on the floor without even looking at it.

"What do you mean?"

She stiffened up a little, the movement hardly visible. Anyone else might have thought it a trick of the eyes, but Atton had spent entire conversations and games of Pazaak just learning how to read this particular exiled Jedi, and he knew that there was something there she didn't want him to find out.

"Nothing," she replied. The tone _seemed_ even and smooth, but it was a tad too hastily spoken for Saer. In other words, his suspicions were confirmed. He narrowed his eyes, slightly, then looked at his card. He was at nine. Saer drew another. She was at sixteen.

Atton hesitated. He didn't want to press, but… in reality, he knew so little about her. He could read her, yes. Tell when she was having doubts, or when she wasn't feeling entirely sound. But he didn't know _why_ she was so stubborn. So hard to get close to, so removed from the events around her. He had no doubt in her ability to persevere until their mission—whatever it turned out it be, in the end—was complete. Physically, there was no threat to her. She might look sleek and feminine, but there was a sense of a crouched feline about her, with the keen eyes of a bird of prey. And that was only when she was at rest.

He drew a card, trying to look like he wasn't considering pressuring her to answer further. He placed it with no small amount of resignation—he barely even recognized his total of 18—as he mulled his thoughts over some more. It had taken some time to get her to relax around him. To get her to shake off the poise of someone waiting for a fight and to just let her body sit however it was comfortable.

And then Disciple had waltzed on in and ruined everything.

"I still think we should get rid of him when we hit Nar Shadda," Atton grumbled, watching her draw a card. "We could say the Hutts got to him. Or the Exchange. You know how they are. Hell, maybe he… could mysteriously pick up a gambling debt?"

Saer smirked a little at that, and Atton's mood immediately improved. Good, she wasn't going to be upset forever. She'd been worrying him for a moment.

She shook her head and sighed, then. She brushed her hair out of her face again, looking up at Atton sadly.

"I have seen the purest warriors fall, Atton. And fall far."

He drew a 6, then placed a –4 on the floor, barely even thinking about it. He looked back up at Saer, the expression on her face disturbing him, slightly. So distant, so… withdrawn. What was normally a spark of well-hidden self-loathing burned in her eyes, then, so fiercely that Atton almost looked away. Those eyes of red-rimmed blue… What hid behind them?

_What happened to you? Was it Malachor that made you like this?_

"They fell for me, Atton. And because I wanted nothing to do with them, they fell in every sense of the word."

She gathered her cards, stood, and left the room. Atton sat there for a long time before he gathered the cards and put them away.


	2. Recollect

****

**Drenched  
**_by shike77_

**Chapter II  
**_- Recollect -_

**Notes**: Okies. Due to semi-popular demand, I have continued. This chapter was originally meant to be a lot longer, but I got thrown a bone and decided the second half had almost nothing to do with the first, so eleven pages or so got cut somewhere around the middle. The other part is being worked on, and it is not finished. _(innocent smile)_

Again, this is more about the Exile than Atton. Eh. And not about the romance, if that disappoints any of you. That might come in the future, but not right now. Not a romance fan, myself. And notice how the genre is now humour/angst instead of just angst? Yes, there are funny things inserted in between. _(innocent whistling)_

Mn, further note—Saer isn't an _interpretation_ of Exile. This is Saer thrown into the Exile's role, and how she would handle it. There seemed to be some confusion about that, so I wanted to clear that up right now.

Alright. The amount of description thrown into Ki's section of this piece doesn't represent what's shown on the screen. Her thoughts and feelings are not displayed to Atton or T3, who merely see what Ki sees during that segment. Just to clear that up beforehand.

Thankies for the reviews, all! _(Waves)_ Enjoy!

* * *

Atton stretched as he walked through the Ebon Hawk, the loud cracks that resulted from each shoulder not even causing a wince. Maybe he could get a massage somewhere, while they were still on Nar Shadda… 

He halted that thought once he spotted Saer, sitting on a chair that was pulled up to a workbench. Her arms were folded and her head resting in them, her shoulders rising and falling in the gentle rhythm of sleep. Her jacket lay discarded on the floor beside her, and the long sleeves of her shirt were shoved back past her elbows. A small droid lay on the workbench, its head removed and circuitry exposed. Her pet project, he remembered, that she'd picked up on Dantooine. She'd paid a considerable amount of cash for that piece of junk, and right after she'd turned down a fake holocron, too.

At first he'd thought it some bizarre statue, but now that there were actually wires exposed he saw that it really _was_ a droid. In one piece, it reminded him of some of the beasts he'd seen exported from Onderron—just one hell of a lot smaller. It had a long neck, with a reptilian face and body. It sported a torn pair of wings that might have resembled a bat's, some of the black, metallic-looking substance still clinging to their structure. Maybe it was modeled after the Krayt Dragons of Tattooine… the face was longer, though. More narrow, with a small pair of horns that failed to look menacing. It had empty eye sockets, and Atton thought that the structure looked… off, for putting screens in there. Maybe he'd ask her about it later.

He heard the soft whir of T3 behind him, and he turned around. The droid beeped at him, and then Atton scowled. "Shaddup," he hissed, glancing at Saer as she stirred slightly. "She's asleep."

The Exile remained as she was, assuming the rhythm of sleep after a small moan. Once he was positive she wasn't tricking him, he picked up the droid's head, examining it scrutinously. Maybe there was something on it… she was awfully quiet about this thing, even though she'd paid good cash for it.

He turned to the droid beside him, who was getting as good a look as he could at the top of the workbench from his height. Atton gestured with the hand holding the head, then thumbed back towards the main hold. T3 beeped, quietly this time, and left the room after Atton.

"Anything on it?" Atton asked once the droid was hooked up to the small head. The trash compactor beeped at him, then used his small, retracting arm to hook the other droid's head up to the main holographic display.

"A recording…?" Atton wondered, startled. Well, this was as good as anything…

::-;;-::

The little droid opened its eyes, slowly, as the door opened and closed. It blinked blearily, twin views flickering on and off as it gathered what little light remained in the dark room. Someone forced open the blinds, and brightness flooded into the room. K1-K1 shook her head, and chimed slightly at the sudden rush of power that fluctuated through her systems. She folded her wings, gazing oddly about the room.

Friend was standing up, slowly, from his cross-legged position on the floor. What was the word… Meditation? This was a new habit, but Friend, she had learned, was full of suprizes. Everything changed, with humans. But a droid just got used to those sorts of things.

"Uh, what are you doing?"

The girl by the window glanced back at Friend, then shook her head. "What does it _look_ like? I'm gettin' the hell outta here, idiot."

K1 chimed innocently, glancing from Friend, then back to the girl.

Friend blinked at her, curiously, then stepped forward. "Why?"

"I gotta find my gang, then we can catch a ride on the nearest cargo freighter and high-tail it off this rock."

He blinked at her, tilting his head to the side. "… So, you're not supposed to be here?"

She snorted. "Engine-slime, you really _are_ an idiot." She glanced back at him past the massive mess of her red-streaked blonde hair, her eyes barely visible, as she tinkered with the window's lock system. "We hitched a ride on a Jedi ship. And, 'cause they're Jedi, they found us. Told us they wouldn't turn us inta' spacedust if we 'greed to come n' be Jedi or whatever the hell you guys do here. So, we're here, we got fed, and I think it's time to leave now. I just have to find out where everyone else is."

Friend seemed to think on that for a moment as the girl swore at the window control panel, then looked at K1. "Ki, do you think you can help?"

The girl glanced over at him, confused, then saw K1, perched on the bed behind Friend. The droid's bell-like voice jingled out a small, short melody of affirmation.

"Wow," she whispered, obviously impressed. "What kind of rich bags did _you_ come from to get a scrapper like that?"

Friend sighed, picking up K1 and absently tickling one of her wings. "My dad built her and Li for mine and my brother's birthday."

The girl looked over the droid, momentarily distracted from the window control panel. Friend smiled, sadly, then held K1 out. The little droid curled and uncurled her long tail, whistling a small melody.

"This is K1-K1—or Ki, for short. Ask her nicely and she'll open it for you. Scratch her wings and she'll use the mainframe to find your friends. Right, Ki?"

The droid nodded vigorously, her eyes glowing. The girl scowled at them both, but hesitantly held out her arms. K1 jumped from Friend's into hers, an easy chord or two ringing out from her vocabulator.

"Can you help me find my friends?" she asked, tentatively dropping the 'tough girl' tone and adopting a soft, polite act. After a moment's hesitation, she gingerly ran her fingers along a partially outstretched wing. "Please?"

K1 crooned a long, wavering note of appreciation, and the girl laughed. "They're soft," she whispered, amazed. "What are they made out of?"

Friend shrugged as the droid suddenly stood up and hopped over to the window. She dug her claws into small outlets and started to whistle tones, changing rhythm, note and tempo at what seemed to be her whim.

"I dunno," he replied, "but Dad told me that's how she gets power. Heat or light touching her wings, or something like that. She really likes our body heat, for some reason."

The droid interrupted with a quick melody as the window slid open. The girl grinned, swinging her legs out of the window and hopping to the grass outside.

"Alright! Where's this main-thing?"

Friend landed less gracefully and with a small 'oof' of protest. "In the main complex," he answered, holding out his arms and catching K1 as she followed. She spread her wings, gathering in the light and warmth of the day, crooning a happy ditty as she stored the converted energy within her power cells. As Friend stood, she clambered onto his shoulder and perched on the back of it, content to be in the light and warmth, observing everything around her with twin bright, crystal eyes.

"Ki, let me know if anyone's coming, okay?" While she chimed a reply, he started to run in one direction, gesturing for the girl to follow. "This way!"

They raced each other through the courtyards of the Dantooine enclave, hiding in bushes or behind walls as anyone else came by. Every once in a while K1 would pop her head above a bush and sing a small melody of greeting to anyone they knew. Older Jedi just shook their heads in amusement at the two children and the small droid.

By the time they arrived at the main building, Friend had to stop and catch his breath. Even as he leaned over, hands on his knees for a small break, the girl grabbed his arm and started to drag him through the hallways.

"We don't have _time_ for that!" she hissed, sounding only slightly winded, but paused to listen outside a door that was left ajar. "What goes on in here?"

"Meeting room," Friend gasped for breath, "for people coming to talk to the Masters."

She gestured for him to be quiet, then, and K1 dimmed her eyes so that her light wouldn't give them away in the dark hallway.

"I'm afraid that it will take some time to assure the authenticity of these papers," Master Kavar was saying, but he was out of sight. According to her heat sensors, there were three other people in the room.

"I assure you, Master, that you will find nothing wrong with them," someone speaking in heavily accented Basic. Friend seemed unaffected, but the girl paled noticeably at the sound. K1 registered the voice pattern as 'possibly bad' for further reference.

"Nonetheless," Master Vrook's voice rang out, "There are precautions we must take. We _did_ find her and four other children as stowaways on our vessel, and by the looks of them they are quite well adapted to their choice of lifestyle—and that includes the one named Haelyhh."

The girl hissed, unhappy with this turn of events, then grabbed Friend's arm and dragged him down the hallway.

"We don't have any time," she growled, fishing a short knife out of a well-hidden pocket. "He's come for Hael." She toyed with it a moment, as if testing its usefulness, and then slipped it up her sleeve.

"Who?" Friend panted, staring wide-eyed at the place where the knife had been.

"Some idiot slaver."

"A what?" Friend asked, startled, and slightly afraid.

"A slaver. Some idiot who thinks she's somethin' to be bought n' sold like an animal—and thrown away until he's got a use for her again."

"I knew _that_," Friend grumbled, "It's just that a slaver, here? I never thought…"

She snorted at him, interrupting. "Kid, when you've been to as many worlds as I have, one rock ain't so much better than the next. Slavers got ships. They take kids from the nice places and stick 'em in the bad places. Using things like fake adoption papers."

K1 found the voice's wavelengths within her memory core and associated them with '_very_ bad—protect Friend from at all costs.'

"So, he's chasing you? Because he thinks he owns this girl?"

"No, 'cause she saw somethin' she wasn't s'posed to. She was repairing droids in his computer-thing, and she saw all the information that got put in and took out. She's got a droid's memory, yaknow. She can't forget what she reads." She shook her head. "And she likes to read."

Friend was quiet, for a moment, then stopped. "Take a left, here."

They ran down a few more hallways, changing directions at Friend's command. They were forced to stop and hide frequently in vacant rooms, or sometimes backtrack and take different paths, much to Friend's obvious frustration. K1 recognized that they weren't allowed in this building without Jedi supervision, which they seemed to be without, and so she kept her eyes dimmed and melodies to herself.

Eventually they did manage to make their way to the mainframe room—but it was crowded with people. Friend winced, knowing that they'd be caught as soon as they walked in there.

"Alright, all we gotta do is pull the alarm-"

"No," he interrupted, "that would shut off the mainframe. And then they'd have to turn it back on again, and then your friend would be gone."

"She's _not_ my friend," the girl grumbled, glancing at K1. "Hey, you know what she did with the window? How did she do that?"

"Security?" he shrugged. "I dunno… but-" He stopped, then. And glanced back over at the droid.

"Hey, Ki, I need you to do me a favour…"

The droid chimed at him, innocently enough, stretching her wings a bit. Friend took the hint and rubbed his fingers along the sensitive membranes. As she crooned, the girl snickered.

"She's got you whipped, kid."

Friend sent her a glare, then whispered to K1, "Alright, we need you to set off the fire alarm in another complex—that way, everyone should leave here, giving us enough time to get what we need and get out. Can you do that?"

She nodded, and he put her on the floor. She scampered through the doorway, dodging feet and other miscellaneous appendages galore as she made her way to the nearest console. She opened the circuitry panel and slipped inside. It took her a few moments to get settled, and then to find the right pitches, but soon alarms were blaring in the meditation building half a complex away. The room quickly cleared, and Friend and the girl ran in, looking around. She chimed at them, waiting for further instruction as they jogged over to her.

"When did you and your friends get here?"

"Yesterday," the girl replied, reaching out to scratch an outstretched wing of K1's in thanks. The droid slipped back inside, pitched a few notes out, and chirped as the images were displayed on the screen. Friend and the girl crowded around the computer, each having to stand on their toes to see the screen properly.

"Alright, so-"

The words froze on Friend's lips as a group of men materialized around them, the sound of ten stealth field generators neatly turning off, one by one. K1 felt like mimicking the sound, but Friend looked pale at the sight of them. Why? Were they a bad thing?

"Thanks, kids, for getting everyone out of here for us," one of the newcomers spoke, moving towards them. "I think we can even give you a treat for helping us out."

The girl grabbed Friend's arm and bolted towards the door—at which they were immediately stopped by another materializing sentient—a Trandoshan, who hissed and reached for them. It clicked, somewhere in K1's processing core, that these people meant to give harm to Friend and the girl.

There was no time to call for help, or to hack into the computers. No time to find a way around it. So, she did the first thing she could think of. She screamed.

It was a high-pitched, squealing sound that caused everyone in the room to grab their ears (or similar structures) in pain, the sound piercing above any other in the room. It carried into the hallways, to the ceiling—and mainly, to the fire-suppression systems.

So there sat an impromptu group of frozen statues, all of sentients of one species or another clinging to their skulls to get rid of the noise—a semi-circle within which sat two completely unharmed children, blinking confused at the display in front of them.

Chiming an innocent melody to herself, K1 scampered over to Friend, who picked her up rather stiffly.

"What just happened…?"

"Your droid just saved our asses, that's what!" the girl grabbed his arm again and pulled him past the frozen Trandoshan. "We gotta reach the others!"

"But these guys are all-"

"Have you been chewing spice?!" the girl hissed, "What kind of idiot would only send a couple of lackeys into a Jedi enclave?! Whatever they're after, we're not stickin' around for it!"

"We?" Friend chorused, but either he was ignored or she just didn't hear him. He shook his head, then, and tugged her down a side hallway. "Follow me," he grumbled, taking the lead. "You have no clue where you're going."

They stumbled out into the sunlight, and Friend slowed a pace or two to gather his bearings. Alright, they'd just come out the east exit into the west courtyard… The buildings they were headed for were…

"This way!" he took off down a path, then abruptly slipped through a hole in an old hedge that was easily twice his height. "Be ready to run if anyone sees us, because I don't think we have time to take the back ways!" he shouted back at her as she followed after, hot on his trail.

Luckily, anyone who might have felt the need to stop the children was gathered near the meditation building, trying to figure out just why the alarms were sounding without end, so they made it to the first building in no time. This was the first dormitory on their list—Haelyhh, whose room was in the middle of the complex.

"Here's the first room," Friend commented as he stopped, leaning over to catch his breath.

The girl was quick to pull a long, thin wire out of her hair, from behind her ear, twist it a little, and then jam it into the slot for the card. She pressed a button, and the door slid open. A wide-eyed Twi'lek girl sat in a corner of the room, her knees pulled up to her chest. She looked up when they came in, saw the blonde and tackled her in a hug. K1 approximated the girl to be four or five standard years old, based on what she knew of Twi'lek children. Which wasn't much.

"It's okay, Hael," the girl soothed, gently running her hand along the beginnings of the Twi'lek's head-tails. "It's alright. We're going to be on our way, soon, and we can leave this place behind. Go back to stealin' and stowin' away, just like we used to."

"He's in there," the little girl whispered, so quiet that K1's highly advanced sound receptors could barely find the wavering pitches.

The blonde girl swore as she moved the Twi'lek child behind her, eyes narrowed at the spot where a Twi'lek male materialized out of nowhere. Stealth Field generators. K1 made careful note in her memory core to learn to distinguish heat signatures of a sentient being in stealth from the environment around them.

"Now, children, you've been a rather intriguing nuisance to me."

K1 stiffened. The voice pattern was recognized as 'extremely dangerous—protect Friend from at all costs.' Her head darted around the room, looking for anything she could use to defend them. No fire suppression systems in sight… She was out of luck, there.

She flared her wings from her position on the left of Friend's back and shoulder, the short, spitting sounds of a snare drum emanating from her vocabulator. All in all, not a threatening sound.

Several others appeared behind them, and she started a low rumble in her throat—almost like a drum roll, but not identifiable to those without a fine ear.

The little Twi'lek was snatched up before anyone could do anything—the human girl launched herself at Haelyhh's captor, but was grabbed by two Trandoshans. She fought them like a caged animal while Friend backed away, his eyes darting around as he looked for a way to help. She could feel his heart pounding, see the sweat starting to glisten on his skin. He was terrified.

_"K1, you're going to meet your friend, soon. He's strong in many ways, but not in the ways that will allow him to protect himself. He has to learn how to be safe, little one. Until then, you need to protect him in all ways under your power. If you can't, there's a song you need to sing. Anyone strong enough to help will come—if they can hear it."_

Master was right, she knew instinctively. Master would never lie to her—not about Friend. She had no doubt that help would come, if she called, but she hesitated nonetheless. What if help didn't come in time?

She started spitting and hissing as they advanced on Friend, flapping her wings in a threatening manner. They only laughed at her, and the nearest one reached out to smack her away. She lashed out, claws raking the skin on his hand and drawing blood so quickly that the movement was a blur. The Trandoshan snarled, withdrawing for a moment. The two who were moving towards Friend hesitated, glancing at each other.

A moment was all she needed. She began to whistle, a high-pitched sound that transcended the hearing of most sentients—only those who had the skill to hear it could, as long they were within a certain distance. The little Twi'lek stared wide-eyed at K1, and the furious human girl paused in her defiant struggles only a moment. Friend glanced at her, confused, but had run out of space to back up—he was against a wall, and the Trandoshans were advancing.

As soon as she was finished her plea, she snarled and launched herself from Friend's shoulder to the nearest Trandoshan's face. His screams of pain didn't faze her as she ripped the thick, leathery scales from his body, although she did regret the blood that was oozing all over her, now. Friend would have to spend an extra long time cleaning her, and that took away from other things he could be doing.

There was the sound of blaster fire and a searing sensation in her back as the light weapon collided with the metal on her frame. That caused her to freeze up, for a moment, and then she was slapped off her foe's face. Her lightweight body hit the wall and then crumpled to the floor.

She heard Friend cry out, but the sound was muffled. She shook her head, her view flickering for a moment, and then she leapt to her feet, scrambling for a moment before finding what she was looking for.

There was a blaster pressed against the little Twi'lek's head, and the sentient with the bad voice was holding it. The human girl was still, her heart beating wildly in spite of her forced calm demeanor. Friend was impossibly still and pale, held back by a single Trandoshan, the blood dripping onto his scalp.

"Now that I have your attention," the bad one smirked, pressing the blaster closer to the whimpering child. "You've given me a lot of trouble, little girl. And all for what you've got right here, inside your head." He tilted his head to the side, moving the gun to below her jaw. "All just to blow it off."

Friend was staring at the gun. Stilling his breath. Trying to focus on it. K1 had seen him try to move objects with his mind, before—his teachers wanted him to. He'd only managed, thus far, to move a lightweight block a matter of inches. This was no block sitting on a table, but a heavy blaster pistol. And there was much more than inches he needed to move—maybe a foot, if he got lucky. If she moved, the girl was dead. They just needed a distraction…

"Sir, we can't reach the others on the com," a Bith commented, examining the device in his hands carefully. "All I'm getting is static."

She looked back over to Friend. No, he wasn't strong enough on his own. Where was help? Where?

The blaster's point moved from the Twi'lek girl to the speaker. "Go _find_ them, then!" he snapped, waving the weapon around. "And report back immediately if something goes wrong!" His grip was loose, relaxed. In his mind, he'd won.

He moved the weapon back towards the girl. "Now, where we left off…"

The blaster suddenly flew out of his hands and K1 shrieked at it, causing it to promptly break down—and any other blaster the sentients happened to be carrying. She glanced over at Friend—who had just passed out, held up only by the Trandoshan. K1 screeched, dashing forwards in an attempt to latch onto the leg of his captor.

She was promptly shaken off, however, and this time she landed down the hall. With a small noise of rage, she scrambled to her feet—

—And stopped at the sound of two lightsabers igniting.

Someone stepped over her, robes whirling about him as he moved towards the conflict. "That's enough, Mirroh," Master Kavar spoke, his stance easy and at the ready. "Come quietly and we won't have to harm you."

K1 chirped at them as she darted past, finding Friend where he was lying on the floor and nudging him with her snout. She crooned, softly, a melody for him, glad that she could feel the vibrations of his heart against the floor underneath them, and she knew he'd wake up. She'd protected him—and he'd started to learn how to protect himself. That was all that mattered to her.

::-;;-::

Atton blinked as the screen shut down, the images replaced with static. T3 whistled and beeped in protest, as if he, too, wanted to see more. Atton felt cheated—there wasn't much to see of the girl, so successfully she hid her face from the world by tangles of unevenly cut hair. The boy kept his hair back and his face open, but there was no air of familiarity about him. This girl… he had the odd feeling he'd seen her before.

Atton grumbled absently as the small droid played with the controls a bit, a brief image occasionally flickering into the projector, but it was away before anything could be made out through the static.

"You're pretty useless, you know that?" he sighed, glaring at the dismembered droid's head. What had they called it on the hologram…? Ki or something?

T3 whistled as he finally managed to get the image on screen, but their mutual feeling of elation was temporary—a login screen. Atton glared his disapproval, pulling some programming spikes out of his pocket. Three left. The droid was already whirring and clicking away, off in his own little world, and Atton sighed, pulling up a chair and tapping buttons. This was bound to be a long night…

They worked at it for hours, the droid's gears grinding whenever he messed up, and Atton swearing as quietly as he pleased when he was forced to backtrack. He'd run out of spikes long ago, and the going wasn't easy, but as long as the droid was still there, he wasn't about to move. Droid superiority his ass…


	3. Isolated

**Drenched  
**_by shike77_

**Chapter III  
**_Isolated_

**Notes**: This chapter… is just a little crazy. Most of it I was just having fun with. The battle scene at the end could have been longer, but I was running out of ideas. And there's only so much hot chocolate one person can chug into their systems at 12:00 at night before figuring that there's no ideas coming. So.

Eh, against my better wishes, this thing is starting to get a little romancey. :barfs: Eh, oh well. After playing the game the second time through and seeing certain… things that I missed the first time around, I just realize how ruddy OBVIOUS Atton is. :snickers at him:

If you find anything confusing, things will be explained later. Much later, I suppose. At 14.5 pages, I think this chapter is long enough. The battle scene at the end might be a bit choppy, so let me un-confuse things for you—the stuff in italics is all one continuous flashback. The fighting does not stop. I just edited that in for… effect. :grins:

Hm, no reviews? What, did I scare y'all off that quickly:grins to herself: Sorry, you're not gettin' rid of me that fast, kiddies.

Oh, and for all you people who like canon fanfics that follow the exact story to every little word—suck it up, I changed a few things. So Nya.

**Production Songs**: "Etude for Piano in F Minor" by Kevin Stephens / trickwaters, and "Ascension to Cosmo Canyon" by Rueben Kee (available for download on I'm gunna have a soundtrack by the end of this, I swear.

* * *

About an hour after Atton and T3 had begun their attempts to decipher the code on the screen, the droid had left, needing to continue with routine maintenance on the ship. Half an hour after that, Atton had fallen asleep. 

Saer, sipping a cup of Java, smiled to herself. They'd obviously gotten nothing out of poor Ki's memory core, as the memories that actually revealed anything about who either herself or Leon had been were highly encrypted.

She pulled up a chair, gently pushing the snoozing Atton out of the way. His chair rolled away, and his upper body slid along the panel it was lying on. He grunted, but otherwise was content.

She watched him for a moment, shaking her head. While he'd made no secret his intentions with her, she had to wonder if they went beyond just casual make-out time. Kreia was right—he _was_ difficult to read. Elusive, especially when she'd badgered him about his apparent Echani training. She had the feeling it was more than just a ruse to fool attackers, but she'd decided, in the end, not to press.

She turned back to the computer, then, bringing up the login screen.

ACCESS CODE: Lukas Nikel

SEARCHING…

ACCEPTED.

PASSWORD:

At that prompt, she paused. With her luck, there was little she could remember Leon telling her about his father—other than the name. No, there was not a chance of her guessing right, not knowing the man or even what he looked like. The returned to the Access prompt.

ACCESS CODE: Leon Nikel

SEARCHING…

DENIED. ACCESS CODE NOT VALID.

She scowled at it, biting an impressive string of less-than-polite words, so as not to wake Atton. _You little shit, Ki,_ she thought to herself. _Of _course_ Leon has to be there._

Then again, Leon had not built Ki. She'd been a gift from his father… She muttered a few nasty words under her breath, in a few languages that she knew, before trying again.

ACCESS CODE: Lukas Nikel

SEARCHING…

ACCEPTED.

PASSWORD:

_Okay, Leon, what was your old man into?_ Not numbers, Leon had commented once, laughing. So a combination of birth dates was out of the question. Besides, he and Khert were twins… His wife's name? Leon had never known what really happened to the woman who gave birth to him, although the bitter Khert had been insistent that she'd left to be a whore somewhere. What was their mothers' name…?

She gave up after long moments of thinking, returning back to the access screen. He'd been almost as close-lipped about his past as she was, as if he thought all that mattered was the road ahead.

She spent a long time thinking about K1, sadly. She'd broken so long ago, maybe she'd just forgotten—L1 always called Khert 'Friend' during the Mandalorian Wars, or at least when Saer had learned to figure out what the droid was saying.

She paused, eyes narrowed in thought. Did anyone actually _pick_ their code and password, or did Ki pick it for them?

ACCESS CODE: Friend

SEARCHING…

DENIED. ACCESS CODE NO LONGER IN USE.

Saer frowned. _This _didn't bode well. Leon obviously had no idea that he could 'log on' to Ki to access her memory core. Ki might have done her best to make it so the person trying to access whatever they needed already knew what the password would be, but right now Saer was having doubts about the small droid's ability to predict people's actions.

She sighed, then, watching the access code prompt appear on the screen. She examined it for a long minute or two, what-ifs popping into her mind as they pleased. _What the hell?_ She decided, finally. _The worst that can happen is that she'll blow up on me._

ACCESS CODE: Saer Zeyl

SEARCHING…

ACCEPTED.

She frowned. What did Ki do, make an account for each person she met? That little idiot could fit a lot more in her core than Saer had thought, it seemed… But a password. For each person. And one that they—and only they—would supposedly be able to guess. She rubbed her forehead, leaning forwards on the panel. She was going to get a massive headache, guessing…

Atton stirred, and Saer knew she had little time. She leaned back and took a swig of her Java, narrowing her eyes. What did Ki actually know about her…? What did she know about _herself_? No big secrets, names of parents or things like that. First thing she could remember was…

She paused, a slight hesitation, then sat forwards and punched in the keys, breathless. Would Ki even _remember_ a detail like that…?

PASSWORD: Manaan

ACCEPTED.

The view flickered for a moment, and then the screen went blank. The sound of static wavered, until she heard a melancholy melody of beeps and bell-tones. Droid talk, she recognized Ki and Li's preference of speech immediately.

"It's not your fault," she reassured the droid, aloud. "We did all we could."

A pause, and then a different phrase, more panicked than the last.

"It's been years, Ki. I found you in pieces. I'm having a little trouble putting you back together. Some of my friends hooked your head up to the holoprojector while I was sleeping."

A whistle and a quip.

She shook her head. "You don't know them. Atton Rand and T3-M4."

She twittered a little, her mood starting to lighten.

"It's a long story, Ki," she smiled, shaking her head.

Silence. The droid hummed a little, sadly.

Saer smiled again, that trademark combination between a smirk and a genuinely warm smile that gave her that cocky, confidant look to her. "Don't worry, I'll find out how to put you back together. Then we can catch up."

There was a pause, and then Ki whistled a security sound. The screen lit up, suddenly, and every possible schematic imaginable for the droid was thrown in front of her. Saer found an empty datapad and inserted it into a slot.

"Make sure to include whatever your wings are made out of, or else you won't be able to turn on, much less pester me about what I've been doing for the past thirteen years."

Ki complied without hesitation, and the datapad was soon ejected. Saer took it out and examined the first thing that had been bothering her—what Ki's wings were made of. She winced as she looked at the list. Some of those things might just be a _little_ hard to find…

"Alright," she mumbled, "I think it's time to go shopping." She glanced up at the screen, where Ki was leafing through the holorecords in the computer. "Can I leave you to yourself for a while, or do you want to be shut down until I need you again?"

Ki made a sound that might have been her equivalent to a snort, and Saer smiled. "Alright, then. Don't break anything."

She stood and stretched, then paused and glanced at the sleeping Atton. Kreia would kill her if she went off alone—the woman seemed more protective of her than a mynock was his female during mating season, no matter how she tried to hide it. Of course, that was the way Atton put it, but that was besides the point.

"Wake up," she gave Atton a slight shove. He grunted, then slowly rose from his position (which was now his front half dangling partially off the edge of the console's round desk) to blink blearily around him.

"Mnfuwhaaa…?"

She smirked at him, then swatted the back of his head. "Come on, I need to pick up a few things."

As she headed back into the garage for her jacket, Atton trailed behind her, confused. "So why am I coming, too…?"

As she flipped her collar up around her neck and fixed her lightsabers so that they were hidden by the long leather pieces on her belt—looked like blaster holsters, but that was probably the point.

"Kreia would have a fit if I went alone, I _think_ Mandalore's sleeping, T3 would just get stolen, Bao Dur would probably get mugged, and Disciple hates this place more than he cares to admit." She freed her hair from its braid, shook it out, then set about taming it again. "That, and you actually know where you're going."

"If we're haunting Pazaak dens, then yes, I do," Atton agreed, scratching the back of his head. "Don't you ever brush that?"

Pulling apart a knot in the red-streaked-blonde strands with her hands, she glanced up at him. "What?"

"Your hair. Most people I know brush theirs before doing stuff with it."

She gave him a look through bangs that had already failed to be held back. "Yes, but most people you know aren't exiled Jedi with a schedule to run."

He blinked at her, then absently attempted to smooth down his hair. He probably had a cowlick again. "You have a schedule?"

"Yeah. We have to be finished by 03:00 standard, get jumped by some guys at 03:22, kick their asses for a couple of seconds, and then be back at the Hawk by 03:30, so I can get some shut-eye before Kreia's arthritis wakes me up at 05:04. She should really get that looked at," that last she added as an afterthought, frowning.

He blinked at her, then glanced at his watch. "It's 23:13… What are you looking for that could possibly take four hours to get?"

She frowned. "The funny thing is, you don't even ask about the getting jumped part anymore."

He shrugged, then stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. "Eh, I get the feeling you're right to the second about that."

She rolled her eyes at him, hiding a smile as she snatched some blasters off the workbench and tossed them at him. "Here, try these out."

Atton caught them, blinking. They looked like ordinary blasters to him—sure, they had Saer's signature design for anything that she made, but she'd thrown together blasters at enemy workstations before when his had broken, and, while these looked like a great deal more thought had been put into them than ten minutes, he still didn't see anything special about them.

"Trust me," she commented, noting the expression on his face, "They'll come in handy."

He shrugged, slipping them into empty holsters. His own blasters were in his cabin, and he felt too lazy to go and fetch them. Besides, Saer might be a little offended if he didn't take these for a spin.

**:s-n-s:**

The things she was looking for ended up being exotic—some of it was quite illegal on any Republic-run planet, and Nar Shadda would be the only place to get it. Once or twice either one of them remembered seeing something in the cargo hold once they were most of their way towards finding it, and once Saer had just spent a the better half of a standard hour bartering with someone before Atton remembered a place to get it cheap and easy.

"… And _that_ I've seen Mandalore use to make stimulants, so I can just get some off him," Saer muttered, pressing buttons on the datapad she was holding.

Atton, straining to carry about a ton of metal to the speeder they'd fixed up and rigged for their own uses, glanced over his burden at her and blinked. "Er, a little help?"

She looked up, blinking. "What?" She then realized he was carrying the load on his own, and smiled a little. "What, can't handle a _little_ strain, kiddo?" Regardless, he felt his load lighten considerably.

He shook his head at her, glaring at the mocking smirk she sported. "_You're_ certainly enjoying yourself," he grumbled as he dumped the package in the speeder.

"I don't know, just you pretending to be a miner was the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. I was considering sticking you in the mining outfit from Peragus."

"Let me guess, this is the daily, 'everyone laugh at Atton' routine?"

She half-smiled at him, shaking her head. She jumped into the passenger's seat, returning to the datapad. "That looks like it. All we have to do is get this shit back to the Hawk."

Atton paused, then, before hopping into the driver's seat and bringing the controls closer to him. "Hey, I think there's an old hangout of mine near here," he remarked, suddenly. "Well, not really a hangout, but I went there once or twice."

Saer sent him a sideways glance, rummaging through one of the boxes. "And?"

He rolled his eyes. "Come on, when's the last time you were drunk?"

"On purpose, or when I was being chased by assassin droids from hell?"

Even Atton had to smile at that one, no matter how much she was intent on avoiding the topic. There were a lot of touchy topics with Saer—you just had to pick and choose which ones were worth losing your head over.

He started up the engines, then kicked the speeder into gear. "It's a date, then!"

"Wha?"

"Hey, don't give me that look," he smiled at her, interrupting whatever threat she'd been about to spill out. "You're stressed. We're not going to be finding that Jedi master with the funny name any time soon, so you might as well just take some time to relax."

She settled for glaring at him, but made no further comment. Reveling in the small victory, Atton quickly navigated through a few backstreets and over some walking ramps—Saer laughed when he almost hit some gang members in a brawl, and he thought that she had a sadistic sense of humour, for a Jedi. Then he reminded herself that she was an infamous Exile… that, and the war had probably turned her bitter, like everyone else in it.

He did manage to find a parking spot some distance away from the club—it was on a secluded street he knew was bound not to receive much attention, and although it was a walk away from their destination, he figured nothing would go wrong. Hey, they'd been fine all night, so far, hadn't they?

Even without wood to knock on, they made it there alright. While Saer looked like she was begging anyone to jump them, just so she might escape the horror of whatever her friend had planned for her. Atton just grinned and led her into the cantina.

There might have been a party at that point in time; the place was packed from wall to wall with dancing couples or other such groups of people. It took them some time to actually get a seat at the bar, and then Saer was determined to stay there, her refusal to budge obvious in the way she sat. She meant no hostility, he knew, but it seemed that the more people in the room, the more agitated she became. Worried about appearances? Hardly. She found it hard to focus when there was so much going on around her outside of combat. She was always readily aware of anything or one around her in life, and while that worked well in a fight, it made her extremely edgy and slightly jumpy the rest of the time.

Atton took a swig out of the Juma Juice he'd ordered, then glanced over at Saer, who still hadn't touched her drink. She still looked like she was waiting for something.

He frowned, then glanced out at the dancing crowd and smiled to himself.

"Ever dance in a cantina before?"

She sent him a glance, but didn't reply.

He smirked, then grabbed her arm and pulled her off the stool, weaving in and out of the crowd with the exiled Jedi in tow. She didn't go quietly, to say the least—she protested this treatment with every insult and rude phrase imaginable. Any other person might just have been effected by this, but Atton had been expecting it—that and he thought it was hilarious how she was trapped, able to do nothing in a crowd this size.

"… bantha's red-coated cow's shit-faced midwife's tach's brother's…"

He thought wryly that she knew one hellova lot more about his mother than he did, if all she was saying was true.

He stopped in the middle of the dance floor, then turned around to face her. He was grinning from ear to ear at the look on her face, which was promising him a long and painful death if he kept this up.

"Hey, we came here to relax, not kill each other, remember?" he advised her, still grinning. He glanced around them at the dancers and shrugged. "I think I remember a few things from the last time I had a girlfriend."

"_That's_ reassuring," she muttered, but Atton interrupted any further complaints by showing her what little he remembered abut dancing.

She already had the beat—Saer had once described the force as a lot like music in itself, when Bao Dur had asked, and sometimes when she spoke you could hear subtle signs of a strong singing voice behind her words. All she needed was to forget everyone around them and just let go.

Atton wasn't much for dancing—he'd always been terrible, and the one time he'd tried the ballroom variant he'd just made an enormous fool of himself. This was probably the one kind he could ever manage to even partially pull off, if only because it reminded him a bit of the Echani training he'd received ages ago. Even so, he still looked like an idiot who didn't know his left foot from his right, and after a while even Saer had to laugh at him.

"It's just like fighting," she told him, half-smiling in that trademarked way of hers. "You just have to find a median between the two."

It took some time, what with Saer almost refusing the let her guards down and just enjoy herself, but they did manage to come up with something, between the two of them. If Atton was actually paying attention, he might have realized that it was a combination of the Echani fighting styles he knew and whatever hand-to-hand combat training Saer had ever received. It looked nothing like fighting, to the common eye, but when Atton looked back on it, he realized that it _was_ almost exactly like training. Just… different. A competition between the two of them, yes, as most things they did together ended up becoming, but there was no hostility that he had come to expect in battle. It was… relaxing, to say the least.

However, when the fifth song ended and a slow one began, both of them stopped, a little thrown off. Atton could physically _see_ Saer's guards being thrown back up, almost hearing her awareness stretching out over the room again (since when did he attribute her senses to a sound…?)

"Uh, yeah," her face was flushed, and she was shaking slightly. "I think we should leave."

As she turned to go, Atton grabbed her hand. It was a reflex action, a spur of the moment, an instinct as strong as any he'd ever felt. She looked at him, then at his hand on hers, then back up at him again. Something flickered within her eyes, but Atton wasn't sure what it was.

He blushed, then, realizing just what he was doing. He dropped her hand like it was poison, scratching the back of his neck. Warm, he thought—her touch was warm. He shook that off, smiling with a shrug.

_I have seen the purest warriors fall, Atton. And fall far._

"Right after another drink, okay?"

And so they were back at the bar, Saer's drink sitting and remaining untouched. Atton was on his second one, halfway through it, and had already decided that was it. The silence between the two of them was far to awkward to get drunk in, and Atton figured Saer wanted to get back to the Hawk.

"You call that _dancing_! Get out!"

Atton turned around on his barstool as a Twi'lek dancer rushed past him, sobbing in distress. Atton glanced over at Saer, who was watching a male Twi'lek shake his head-tails in distress. He was standing nearby, glancing at his watch with a resignated look on his face.

"As terrible as she was, there's no way I'm going to find another dancer," he spoke to someone beside him, stressed. "Vogga's expecting me in under half an hour!"

Atton glanced over at Saer, who returned the gleam in his eyes with a 'what?' expression of her own—eyebrow raised, eyes narrowed. He grinned, then grabbed her arm and towed her towards the Twi'lek.

"Remember what those guys in the flophouse said about Vogga?"

"… He's a Hutt?" she replied, warily, falling into step behind him.

He would have uttered a fast retort, but the Twi'lek was standing before them, an exasperated expression on his face.

"Unless that's a dancer behind you, I want nothing to do with either of you."

Atton could feel Saer's eyes burning a hole in the back of his skull, so he scratched his neck. "Well, I don't think she's a professional, but…"

"I've danced in cantinas before," Saer interrupted, with a glance at Atton. "Hutts, too, when I was a kid."

Now it was Atton's turn to stare at her.

"Good enough!" the Twi'lek sighed, running a hand over his let head-tail. He turned around and pulled something out of a box. "You have to wear this-" he stopped with a glance at the curved white scar on her left cheek, then produced a bottle of thick liquid. "This should darken your skin to hide any imperfections, as well."

Saer caught one glance of the material and took an immediate step back. "_No _fucking way," she hissed, but Atton just grinned, took the clothes and bottle from the man and tugged Saer in the direction of a refresher.

"What happened to threatening people with a lightsaber to get my way?" she grumbled in his ear. "That happens to be my _specialty_, in case you didn't notice."

"Yeah, but Vogga's got Kath Hounds, and plenty of body guards. You might be the almighty kick-ass-guru of whatever crap the Jedi teach you, but _I'm_ just an ordinary idiot with a blaster. Personally, I like my head where it is."

"Trust me, I think it'd look very attractive on a silver platter, right about now."

Atton turned and smirked at her. "But what would you do with the rest of me? Turn it into your willing sex slave?"

She gave him a look. "I don't think you've got the manly presence for that."

He shrugged. "Hey, if I had met _you_ in _my_ attractive, revealing jumpsuit, then you'd be thinking differently."

"Look in the mirror, lately?" she snapped back, eyeing the clothes in his arms. "And besides, running around a deserted mining facility in a jumpsuit is embarrassing enough—but dancing in public in frickin' _lingerie_ is too much."

Atton examined the outfit in his other hand for a moment, blinking at it. "Hey, these things are padded…"

She pulled a face at him, scowling. "I hate you _so_ much."

Atton only smiled, shoved the collective items in her arms, and then gave her a gentle push through the refresher door.

Ten minutes later, Atton was still standing outside the door. He scowled, and while he considered asking someone to go in for him, he figured anyone going in there was too drunk or drugged up to sputter out an intelligible sentence.

Atton pushed the door open and peeked in. "Are you _done_ yet?"

Saer's voice came from the farthest stall from the door, "There is no possible way to describe the excruciatingly slow death you will suffer if you come in here."

Deciding that he'd take his chances, he ducked in, sticking his hands in his pockets and leaning against the wall beside her stall. "Come on, do you seriously think I'd pass up a chance to see you in something skimpier than a jumpsuit?"

"I'd come out there and kick your ass if the galaxy wasn't against sinistrals. Fucking dextral majority of the population…"

Atton blinked at that, barely hearing the curses and sounds of movement within the stall. Why would she say…?

His eyes widened, then, and he grinned. "Shirt trouble?" he asked, perhaps a little too hopefully.

"A fucking stroke of genious you had there, Atton," she snapped back, then swore as she tripped over something.

"Want some he—Ow!" He cried out as a shoe bounced off his skull from above. Glaring at the gap in between the stall door and roof, he bent down to pick it up. "What the fuck was _that_ for!"

"Do _not_ try my patience right now, Atton."

"Schutta," he mumbled, rubbing his head. "You hit me with the _heel_!"

"That's nothing," she replied, snippish. "Try walking on them."

He sent her a look, wondering if it would pierce through the door, then sighed. "Look, that Twi'lek might be getting impatient. Just let me help you get the shirt on, and then we can go, you can dance, we can break into his warehouse, run away with whatever we want in there, and _then_ you can beat me up."

A pause. "With a painstick?"

Atton winced. Oh, he was _so_ going to get it… "Sure, with a painstick."

There was a rustle of clothing, and then she opened the stall door, her jacket wrapped around her and the front of the bra-shirt-thing clutched in place.

Her skin was darker, that was for sure—it had a slight glisten to it, but it definitely removed the visuals of every scar on her body. When Atton realized he was staring, Saer was turning around, but hesitating the take off the jacket.

After a moment's hesitation, he slipped it off her shoulders and dropped it on top of a pile of her clothing. He grabbed the loose ends of the shirt and tied them where they connected up at her neck—it involved some complicated lacing, so he could see how she would have trouble with it.

The liquid didn't hide the tattoos she'd accumulated over the years—a pair of flaming wings on her shoulderblades remained prominent, if only slightly dulled. The black tattoo on her right arm didn't get much of a chance to be examined, because Saer immediately hissed a sharp intake of breath.

"That's tight," she commented, idly, not quite in warning. Atton smiled apologetically, blushing as he loosened it up.

"Sorry," he murmured, then stepped back. "I think that's it. Feel good?"

"I feel like a whore," she muttered, grabbing her jacket and slipping it back over her shoulders. It didn't quite fit her in the front now, Atton realized, because of how the bra thing fit her… He looked away, then picked up her clothing and stuffed it in a bag. He hesitated before picking up her lightsabers—why did she carry two if she used the double-bladed ones, anyway?

"Lose those, and there will be hell to pay."

Atton winced, picking them up and stowing them in the pack. He pulled the drawstring tight, then slung it over his shoulder and turned to face Saer.

She was snapping the heels off the shoes, and Atton realized that she'd probably never worn a pair of stilettos in her life. He smiled at that thought, wondering how pissed the Twi'lek would be if he found out she'd wrecked the shoes. He was probably just grateful that she was willing to dance for him.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, hair spilling across her back in a knotted wave of silk. He shook his head at her, smiling as she swore and ran her fingers through it, attempting to rip the knots out of her hair in one fell swipe.

Atton winced, wondering how she could possibly want to do that to her own hair. "I don't think Vogga likes his human dancers bald," he commented, idly.

"Yeah, as if you could do-" she stopped when he produced a fine-toothed comb out of the pocket of his jacket. "… Better," she finished, taking it from him. She hesitated, as if something was holding her back, at which point Atton snatched the comb from her hand and started to run it through her hair himself. "You act like you've never used one of these before," he commented dryly, being as gentle as he could.

"Just wondering why you've got a comb on you."

He grinned. "Never know when you need to impress the ladies."

He could have sworn she rolled her eyes at him. "Yeah, because hanging around in the woman's refresher with someone dressed like a whore is going to impress them."

Atton blinked at her, then looked her over… "Hey, you're right."

"You didn't notice?" she grumbled, adjusting her jacket. "Don't get out much, do you?"

He bit back a reply, finishing with her hair. He stuffed the comb back in his pocket and sighed. "Well, that should do. Turn around and let me see."

She hesitated a moment, and Atton wondered about that, but she complied after a breath in time.

She let go of the front of the jacket and let her arms fall awkwardly to her sides, looking away but not at anything in particular. Atton had to admit that the outfit was a definite turn-on. Hell, one look at the curves of her body was enough to make any man's jaw hit the floor in a normal situation, but wearing _that_!

As soon as he got past the initial shock of seeing Saer in something less than a shirt and a pair of pants (or a jumpsuit, for that matter), however, Atton realized that this… was not Saer. The way she stood was not the stance of a dancer, but a battle-hardened warrior. Her fighting styles might look something like dancing, but beyond that oil were scars of battles long past, her body toned and constructed for a different sort of dancing. Not what she was doing for Vogga, while he watched from a corner by the Kath Hounds' now-drugged water dish. The graceful movements that were sometimes fast, sometimes slow, just didn't seem to suit Saer. She knew them, all too well for what he knew of her history, and that made him consider what she'd said earlier. Dancing for Hutts? She hadn't been lying, by the ease of movement she carried about her.

He moved when the Kath Hounds padded over to drink, one at a time, their tongues lolling. They kept glancing over at Saer, almost as if they wanted Vogga to sick them on her.

Atton sent them a glare, hands itching for his blasters. They were concealed, safe within his jacket pockets. He didn't want to have them confiscated and then not given back—Saer probably wouldn't have taken it that well. Besides, he didn't have spares on him.

"My Master surely would wish me to compliment your dancing this night," the Twi'lek was saying at Atton made his way over to Saer—how the hell could the Hutt sleep when there was someone like _her_ dancing like _that_ in front of him? "If I could possibly convince you to make a permanent contract with us…?"

She shook her head, already braiding her hair back out of the way. "No, I'm afraid Vogga will just have to deal with me disappearing for now."

He looked disappointed, but Atton hadn't expected anything else. Hell, he'd expected Saer to grab one of the Kath Hounds and use it to crush Vogga's head the entire time she was there. "Well, here is your pay. I have other matters to attend to, so I wish you well." And with that he was off, leaving the two of them alone in the room with sleeping Vogga and Kath Hounds.

Atton handed Saer her jacket, which she threw over her shoulders, and then she started looting through the pack for her lightsabers. She pulled them both out and inspected them critically while Atton fiddled with the lock.

"Pure Pazaak," he smirked to himself, then stood back to allow to door to slide open. "We're in."

They grabbed a few things that looked important—Saer found a lightsaber and some old Jedi robes that were hardly her size but a nice keepsake. Atton found some rare Pazaak cards, and then pulled out an old-looking holocron. "Jedi or Sith?" he asked Saer, who merely shrugged. He stuffed it in a pocket, along with some old datapads that looked like they had been through hell. A couple of interesting-looking blaster upgrades went into the sack, and then he pulled it closed. He saw Saer rummage through a few plasteel containers, but apparently found nothing else but a slave collar with a bizarre-looking symbol on the front. The thing was primitive, but looked painful, so Atton asked no questions when she dumped it in the sack. She probably wanted to use it to inflict major bodily harm on him later in return for this little escapade… Although he thought that he wouldn't mind it if she was wearing _that_ outfit…

Heavy as it was now, he slung the bag over his shoulder and glanced at Saer. "To a refresher?" He asked, grinning at how bizarre she looked with her weapons' belt slipped over the skimpy dancer's outfit.

"If you'd be so kind," she mumbled, gathering her jacket closer to herself. He laughed, and they left Vogga's behind them.

**:s-n-s:**

"Where'd you learn to dance like that?"

"Hm?"

Saer had changed out of the outfit and Atton was now working on disabling the security system both he and Bao Dur had set up on the speeder.

"I _said_," he paused for a moment to mouth out the right code, trying it out before following through on it, "Where did you learn to dance like that? I mean, for Vogga."

She paused a moment, then sighed, brushing back a few strands of her hair—a signal that she had something more to the matter than she wanted to say. "What, Jedi aren't allowed to dance?"

He spared her a glance before the system shut down, and then he dumped the pack into the back and leaned against the door. "Come on, you actually knew what you were doing. You weren't lying about dancing for the Hutts, were you?"

She rolled her eyes and leaned against the craft. "Do you seriously think that everyone at the Jedi enclaves had a childhood filled with butterflies, Atton?"

He waited for her to continue, watching her carefully. With Saer, you couldn't watch her face—it was a rare occasion that her eyes would give something away, so you had to notice other things about her. The way she fiddled with her hair—it was always in front of her face, no matter what she did with it—the way she shifted her position, slightly. She turned inwards a little, when something sensitive popped up. One time he thought she'd slipped into one of the Echani stances when they were meeting with the exchange.

"Most of the kids there came from poor families who looked at the enclave as a way to feed their kids. Give them a good education, and standing in society. The enclave on Dantooine was reserved for children who showed the potential to become Jedi Knights—not just the kids with some force sensitivity."

She didn't want to tell him the whole story, he knew, so she was talking around the matter. She was hoping that if she talked enough about something not quite relevant, he'd leave it alone.

She sighed, shaking her head. "I guess… I remember a little bit about Manaan."

That startled him. Manaan? Was she jerking his chain, now?

She caught the look and smirked in her way. "I was found in the ocean by workers in an illegal Kolto harvesting site. I was shipped off to Taris, where I became a slave in one of the lower city cantinas. In that business, you learn real quick that if you're not talented, you've got to learn how to be—and fast."

At the look on his face, she turned away again, although he could have caught a grimace in her expression. Even so, he wasn't sure.

"Just real-life angst. You live with it," she covered coldly, pushing off the speeder into a standing position, then crossed her arms. It was a position she adopted frequently—but most often when something was distressing her. Almost like the feeling of standing squarely on her own two feet calmed her in the face of danger. "Life is like that; you make choices, fight your battles, and in the end you look back on it all and wish you did things differently."

Atton had to chuckle a little at that one. "Ain't that the truth…" he trailed off, suddenly, frowning. He had one of those… _feelings_. He looked at Saer, a glance she caught, and she pulled out her blaster pistol that always sat on the back of her hips. Lightsabers made too much commotion, so whenever someone felt someone awry she pulled out a blaster, hoping not to attract attention. Not like anyone of importance was within sight, anyway. And rumours abound stated some sort of bounty hunter truce, regardless, so things couldn't be _that_ bad…

"Well, it seems you hang out with quite the lovely ladies, for someone 'displaced by war' as you were…"

Saer dropped into a defensive stance, blaster pistol aimed for the source of the voice. Atton slipped into a similar position, the twin pistols Saer had built him pointed and ready. That voice… he tried to remember where he'd heard it before. Not that it mattered. Whoever these guys were, they were after him, not Saer. For once.

"Let me guess," he commented dryly, sweeping his eyes over the assembled. Two Twi'leks, a human, and a Cathar male standing a little off to the side. They weren't a common sight in the galaxy, these days… not since the Mandalorians bombarded their homeworld. "I owe one of you scum something?"

One of the Twi'leks smirked. "Hardly. We simply wanted to give your female companion a warning; one should not frequent with those who have the heart of a betrayer and a murderer."

His eyes narrowed, and he was about to spit back a retort when Saer interrupted, "It would seem that there are those in your company who know their fair share of deception and lies."

The Cathar hissed at her, striding forwards. He was tall, even for a Cathar, bordering on the height of a short wookie. "You should talk about betrayal and corruption, little girl. What did you find when you ran back to your dear old Jedi? I suppose you didn't mention what you did to an old friend, now did you?" He started to circle, like a vulture. Saer replaced her blaster, then placed her hands on her hips, moving in turn to circle him as well. Atton knew that from there she could flick out her lightsaber with barely a moment's notice for its need. Maybe her opponent didn't.

"If men can't control themselves, then I shouldn't be to blame."

He bared his teeth, a soft growl escaping his lips. "What, you tell yourself that lie every day, bitch? Helps you sleep, does it?"

Her eyes narrowed, fingertips twitched. The Cathar had struck a nerve, although Atton couldn't fathom how. "So you'd swear vengeance for a man who is nothing but a monster, now? He left the sane world of his own accord, and you'd be giving him too much credit to attribute that to me."

He smirked. "What, the Jedi make everything all better? Did your dear old Master Kavar sit you on his lap and tell you stories, like he always did?"

"Leave them out of this."

He grinned cynically, as if sensing he had won something. Atton's fingers were ready to twitch, but any move and the hair triggers would cause unfortunate problems.

"Or maybe Master Vandar told you that it didn't matter, that you were safe. Hell, maybe even _Atris_ walked up and gave you a big old hug, told you she admires you and all that _shit_ that they fed us when we were there."

She remained silent, although the way she was walking told Atton that things were going to get real bad, real fast.

"Or maybe Zez-Kai Ell told you that it's okay you're a filthy _whore_, and it's not important how many people _die_ because you're a stuck up _bitch_ who won't admit to being even partially mortal, you're still a good little Jedi because you betrayed your friends and went back running."

"You know better than I do what it means to run to someone in power with your tail in between your legs, puppy." She smirked. "What, have you followed these idiots around ever since the war ended, begging at their table for scraps?"

He snarled, and Atton had to wonder what the hell was going on. He glanced at the other three present, who looked as clueless as he was.

"At least I have the decency to admit I was wrong! Even when you were lying there, broken, you wouldn't hear of having any help!"

"Not from _you_," she hissed. "Why I'd ever want the help of a spawn of a cesspit like you is beyond me."

"Maybe because you _needed_ it!"

"I need _nothing_ from the likes of you."

He was silent for a moment, then reached behind him and rested his hand on the back of his belt. "This is it, then? No apology, nothing?"

"No," she replied, coldly. "Not for you."

They drew their lightsabers simultaneously, spun them in perfect unison, and then went at each other in blurs of motion. No time was wasted elsewhere—Atton opened fire on the other three, who returned it in earnest. He was almost startled when yellow and blue spouted forth from his weapons instead of the traditional red of blasterfire, but didn't complain when his opponents went down almost immediately. Whatever Saer had done to these blasters, they were definitely effective.

He turned back to the duel between Saer and the Cathar, with wide eyes at how fast they were moving. It was almost hard to keep up with them—blurs of silver and copper, each holding a double-bladed saber as they spun and danced _around_ each other, ducking and weaving past attacks. Saer, he noticed, rarely blocked the Cathar's attacks. While he threw up a good barrier of blocks and parries to stop her attacks, she let his lightsaber slide past her. Atton calmed his mind, aimed his blasters, and started to look for an opening.

He'd seen Jedi and Sith duel—but he hadn't seen something quite like this. Saer was moving in a fluid motion, her body physically never pausing or hesitating as he'd seen her do in other combat. He supposed that since she was fighting a real Jedi—someone physically trained in the same ways she was, who wasn't going to fall with one or two strikes—she wasn't forced to constantly stop and find a new target. She was in constant motion, every tendon and muscle in her body twisting and turning with no rest. The Cathar seemed to be in a similar position; he knew little about the warrior people, but he'd heard that they could be vicious.

Openings would be hard to come by, in this duel. He'd have to wait it out until he found one.

**:s-n-s:**

_"Boss, why haven't we bolted yet?"_

_The Cathar child turned to look at her, ice blue eyes locking onto her deep navy ones at her position at the door._

_She scowled at him when he didn't reply, sitting down on his bed. Her face was flushed, and she looked like she'd been crying again. It wasn't anywhere near as often as other girls did—only when something was really distressing her. With her hair kept in unruly tangles in front of her face, there was little a complete stranger could tell about her._

_"If this is a slicing problem, I know a kid with a really kick-ass droid that can do anything… I think he'd make a good really good recruit… He's about our age, I think."_

_He smiled and shook his head at her. He didn't think he could explain it to her; he had such a hard time talking, still. "No, I… like it here."_

_She snorted, standing up and drawing herself to her full height—which wasn't much, compared to him. "Yeah, well I hate it here. Everyone's so high and mighty, so perfect. It drives me nuts." She made a face, then started pacing. "All that Vash bitch keeps telling me is, 'Jedi shouldn't swear,' and that I should 'focus on the medimitation' thing or whatever the hell she's talking about."_

_He tilted his head at her, frowning. "I get it easy."_

_She pouted, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "That crap just makes me fall asleep. Every time! It's not my fault, either. Just sitting around, doing nothing, not even moving!" She let out an exasperated noise, then glanced over at him through her hair. "I can't stand it. It's worse than waiting to be caught in the cargo hold of a Hutt's ship."  
_

**:s-n-s:**

Saer snarled as she forced the Cathar back, spinning her lightsaber as he stumbled. "You're holding back, kitty," she hissed, eyes narrowed. "It's insulting."

He was breathing hard, but he managed out, "This is crazy… last time I saw you?"

"Yeah, well I got it back," she interrupted, moving around him. "What, afraid I'll whip your cowardly ass?"

His heart was pounding against his chest. He felt it, now… something twisting inside of her, corrupt and dead to life. Blanketed with the living force, yes… but whatever was within her was so wildly familiar… something he couldn't quite point a finger to. But there was immeasurable pain within her, and he wondered how she lived with it. Before, the currents of life on Nar Shadda had hidden it from him, but now…

He narrowed his eyes, shaking it off. "Bring it, schutta."

She attacked first, this time around. She charged in with what seemed to be a standard attack of the Makashi form, but when he moved to counter it she spun the weapon around her body, using her momentum to dodge his attack and provide a counter of her own. He barely managed to move his saber up to block her second attack, but that met only air as she retreated for a rebound. He bared his teeth and charged her before she could make a move, his body slipping into the Juyo form.

She sidestepped, and he brought his weapon around to chase her. When she backflipped over his blade, he reversed the swing, cursing mentally at the loss of his momentum. She brought her own blade down to counter his as she landed, as if she were casually blocking a blastershot aimed at her from behind. She twisted her wrist as she spun around, bringing their blades up and above her head. He moved his blade from hers and made a feint at her face, which he expected her to block.

She continued with her momentum, however, ducking low and kicking out one of her legs. He was swept off his feet, but he caught himself with his hands and use the Force to help spring himself back to his stance. He stumbled for a moment as he brought his blade up to defend himself against a horizontal attack from Saer, who shoved him back once more.

"You're sloppy," she snapped, jumping at him for an overhead assault. He moved to block, and she met his blade so forcefully he had no chance to parry. When did she become so strong…? "I could see your attacks coming if you were on Coresaunt."

"Just testing you," he baited, grinning. He tried to force her back with a combined use of the Force and brute strength, and she used the momentum from his push to flip away from him, landing first on one of her hands and then both her feet—and then he remembered that she was left-handed. She was always good at hiding it from her opponents in battle, then switching and causing them to re-evaluate strategies at the last moment. She was near ambidextrous in the art of fighting, but when forced into a situation where her right hand would be the dominating factor in winning or defending herself, she was significantly disadvantaged. If only he knew how to force her to play by his rules…

If he could find a chance to keep it in mind, he would. Right now, he had to focus on keeping her lightsaber out of his innards.

**:s-n-s:**

_He watched her for a moment, reading her movements, and could see that she was genuinely distressed. "Maybe you should… try it?"_

_"Bantha shit, Boss, I _have_!" she snapped, flopping down on the bed again. "I've tried everything. I've tried doing everything they tell me to do. I tried clearing my frickin' head, but what am I supposed to do while I'm sitting around doing nothing? When I'm not doing anything, I'm thinking about something. When I'm not thinking, I'm doing something. Isn't that how people _normally_ are?"_

_She sounded tired; sounded like things were just too frustrating for her to handle. She had gotten like this rarely during the time they'd spent together—how long was that, four years? And she'd had a brief emotional breakdown maybe… twice? If even that._

_He waited for a moment, wondering if she was going to continue. When she didn't, he tried to figure out a way to console her, but only ended up drawing blank. He wasn't really one for words._

_"They like you guys. They like you, because you guys just sit there, take in whatever they feed you, and you can do it, no problem. Me, I'm gunna be stuck with bunch of frickin' two-year-olds for the rest of my life, dammit!"  
_

**:s-n-s:**

She spun her lightsaber in both her hands, switching back and forth between them in spirals of motion that forced the Cathar to back away, out of range of her attack. He moved one half of his saber in the way of her attack, and when it bounced off, he slipped into the more complicated maneuvers of the Makashi. A twist of his wrists and the left side of his lightsaber was headed for her neck. She flicked up the right side of hers and caught the blow, unmoving for that brief moment in time. Her eyes met his, and both sets narrowed in determination.

She ducked under their arms, then, pivoting on her left foot and planting a firm kick to his left kneecap while twisting her wrists to lock their hilts together. With both weapons caught on each other, the Cathar knew she had the advantage. While they had both been well suited towards the Guardian's path, he was heavily out of practice with his saber, and carried it around mostly for sentimental value.

He moved his legs out of her attack radius, putting himself in a bit of an awkward moment in terms of balance. He released one hand from his saber and flicked it over her hold, then backflipped out of harm's way as she moved in with a downwards strike. She didn't hesitate in chasing him; she kicked off the ground in a spinning whirlwind, which came down at him in a tornado of lightsaber and Jedi. He blocked her blade successfully, but was thrown back when both of her feet met his chest.

**:s-n-s:**

They sat there for a long time, neither one really saying anything. The Cathar watched her for a time, trying to read her emotions, but found that she was struggling to keep them under control, so he looked away.

"If you don't like it here…"

She looked up at him, eyes wide, and he immediately felt guilty. He couldn't leave—he'd finally found a place he could call home. He hated being constantly on the run, if not from crime lords or Hutts than any sort of government they came across on whatever planets they were on, however briefly. He liked having familiar surroundings, not just finding and taking whatever refuge they could. He liked going to bed warm and full. He liked getting sleep at night, not having to worry about taking shifts on watch or anything like that. He liked feeling safe, and knowing that nothing could go wrong. He just didn't know how to say it so that she would understand.

"… If you don't like it…" he swallowed. "Then why don't you leave?"

She sat in a painful silence for a moment before whispering, "You wouldn't come with me…?"

"No," he replied, softly. Just one word… couldn't hurt her feelings, could it?

**:s-n-s:**

He landed on his back with a grunt, but as he moved his right arm to retaliate with his lightsaber, he found hers at his throat. The silver beam hummed in soft resonance, and he got his first real look at the hilt he'd had in a long time… 

… It wasn't the lightsaber he remembered her having. The design was completely different; a combination of black and metallic silver that wound their way around the hilt, breaking off into different patterns. The one he remembered Saer having looked nothing like that; nothing at all. She never would have parted with that saber, he knew, unless…

**:s-n-s:**  


She took a deep breath, then, and sighed. She looked up at him, a grin on her face. "If you're stayin', Boss, then I'm stayin', too. No sense in splittin' up the team, is there?"

**:s-n-s:**

She saw the look in his eyes, and her grip on the weapon hardened. "Yeah, they exiled me," she replied to the unspoken question. "What did you expect, for me to just live happily in a world filled with Gizkas?" She half-laughed at that, but there was a pain in her eyes the Cathar read clear as day. She felt that her exile was the final betrayal, the last thing that she could have taken before being completely broken. Everyone she had thought to trust utterly and completely had turned on her… Including him.

She stood and turned away from him, deactivating her lightsaber. While he was standing he caught a glimpse of another hooked to her belt, a pale green in hue, but didn't say anything. He knew who that one belonged to.

"Saer," he spoke, softly, standing. "I thought…"

"I know what you thought, Cehkan," she snapped, bitterness dripping from her voice like a thick venom. "I know what you thought had gone on with the council, and I damn well know what you think about Khert." She turned to look at him, her features cold and hard as ice, the red in her irises burning brighter than they ever had during the Mandalorian Wars. "Well, let me tell you a little fucking secret; I could have lied to him, and told him that I loved him. I could have let him do whatever the fuck he wanted with me, but I didn't. You can go ahead and think that I deserved everything he did, because quite frankly, I stopped caring what you think a long time ago."

She turned and left, those words hanging on the air between them. "Let's go, Atton," he heard her say, but only partially.

Atton, who had stood silent throughout the whole exchange, hesitated. He could ask what she meant… maybe that Cathar—Cehkan, she'd called him?—would answer, just to spite her. Just to show that he still had fight left in him. He could ask, and maybe she'd even answer.

_I have seen the purest warriors fall, Atton. And fall far. They fell for me, Atton. And because I wanted nothing to do with them, they fell in every sense of the word._

His eyes met the cold ones of the Cathar, and he turned and hopped into the speeder with Saer, started up the engines, and drove back towards the Hawk.


	4. Pavement

**Drenched**  
_by shike77_

**Chapter IV**  
_Pavement_

**Notes:** Wow. I dunno what to say—the sudden influx of reviews I got for that last chapter was amazing. I know it's not a big deal when you compare it to amazing people like Winterfox and Helena L, but this is a big deal for me and I love each and every one of you. And thank you so much for telling me about how the Ki thing was too soon—I guess I'll have to put more planning into this in the future. :P Posting this means leaving my comfort zone in the LOD section here, so this all means to much to me. Thank you.

Well. What's special about this chapter? I don't think it's anywhere near as amusing as the last one, but I do have the clever jokes in there (some, yes, are at Disciple's expense. Sucker). I didn't really intend for this to turn into a game novelization, but, like every other story I write, it's formed itself, and I'm just going with the flow. 'Slave to my Muse' indeed…

I have a query, for all interested; would you prefer a male or female Revan? Personally, I like taking the opposite-gender approach to the Exile and Revan, but I also hate how the male romance plot turns Bastila into some kind of sappy High School Fangirl. I'm not playing this story for the Romance, but I do want your input, since you're the ones who have to read it.

**A quick notice – **I have started up a play in school. We're doing _the Lottery_, (which is an amazing short story, and I think you can find it on the net somewhere) and we have a short rehearsal period before the show. Sorry to say, it cuts into my time quite a bit. I'm also crammed with work I have to do… so updates may or may not come in the long run. I love this story and I'm throwing as much at it as I can before the creative addiction to it runs away (these things happen to me a lot), but play is time-consuming.

* * *

Atton was rubbing his hair with a towel after a brief trip to the refresher, wandering around the Ebon Hawk, looking for something to do. He was thinking of getting Saer to play a round or two of Pazaak before they headed out—if she was still on the ship. While a little curious about the events of the previous night—technically, that morning—he felt that if he tried to press, she'd look into the matters of _his_ past. So he decided to keep quiet about it. Whatever it was, he probably didn't want to know. 

He saw Disciple staring slack-jawed into the cargo hold, a cup of Java long-gone cold in his hands. The scoundrel shook his head, hearing the subtle whistle of weapons in movement through the air. Saer was probably training, for all he knew. The woman could pull off some really bizarre movements in action—maybe she was just showing off again.

He poked his head in the doorway and _stopped_.

Saer had two vibro double-blades and, for some bizarre reason he couldn't fathom, was using them both at the same time. She used numerous combinations of wild spinning manoeuvres, slipping the weapons behind her back, force powers and her own skill with the blades to pull off whatever she was doing—surprisingly enough, with her eyes closed. She spun the two weapons about her like a demon on fire; sometimes she'd let go of one in favour of a two-handed manoeuvre, the weapon she left in the air moving as if to block incoming attacks. She didn't leave a weapon hovering for long; she snatched it out of the air as she ducked underneath it, sometimes leaving the other one to finish spinning of its own accord, held in place by the Force she commanded.

Neither man realised that they were still standing there, slack-jawed, until Mandalore walked up behind them. Atton nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the Mandalorian warlord, and turned to look at the man. The man they'd picked up on Dxun was impossible to read most of the time, what with always wearing the armour and all, but Atton figured that there was no way someone could _not_ be utterly stunned when watching that woman throw those blades around like she actually knew what she was doing.

It had to happen some time, Atton thought; screwing up, that is. Her hold on the blade in her right hand slipped, slicing a deep gash in her left wrist. She swore, dropping both weapons as she ripped off the glove on that hand, then tossed it on the floor in favour of grabbing her wrist and turning towards the doorway.

Disciple promptly bumped into her, being on his way over to help her out in the first place. He turned bright red when it happened, and even Atton had to smirk.

"What-!" she breathed, but he only managed to force out a few useless attempts at an explanation as he clasped his hands around her wrist. A soft glow emanated from his hands, and he withdrew, his face almost as red as the blood on her hands. He looked down, momentarily, and suddenly paused.

Atton followed his gaze and was reminded of the scars on her wrists; he'd seen them on Peragus, when there were no gloves for her to hide them with. Regardless, he'd never gotten a good look at them until that moment. Not marks of battle or some adolescent depression spree, he realised now that they were signs her wrists had been bound for a long period of time.

"Where did you-?" Disciple started, and Atton tossed a towel at the Exile to interrupt.

"So, they teach you to fight like that in Jedi training or what?"

Saer walked over to another corner of the room, at which point Atton took the opportunity to stand innocently enough beside Disciple and mutter, "Nice try," without her noticing.

"Sorry?" the historian asked, still red, but the Exile turned around to look at them, preventing further comment.

"Atton, know a place to get a good pair of gloves anywhere nearby?" She held up the torn and blood-soaked pair. "I think these have seen the ends of their days."

"Sure," he replied, then glanced over at Disciple. "Hey, you going to come with, or is the ship a good enough place to hide today?"

The blonde man ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. "I might as well join you."

He rolled his eyes. "Grab your lightsaber, then."

"Hide it, too," was Saer's interjection. "Whatever I've been hearing about this Bounty Hunter truce probably doesn't stretch to you."

He frowned, confused. "A truce between Bounty Hunters?"

"Word has it that the Bounty Hunters can't touch her or each other while she's on Nar Shadda," Atton explained, pulling the blasters Saer had given him out of their holsters and making sure the energy cells were charged up. Plenty of rounds left in them.

Saer saw them and blinked, startled. "Right, I forgot to ask how those worked out for you."

"Great," he replied, slipping them back into their places. "What kind of lens is in these?"

She smiled a little, then shrugged. "Modified some lightsaber ones to accommodate for short bursts of light instead of a constant stream." At the look on both men's faces, she explained further, "There's some fragments of lightsaber crystals I've had on me for a while. They're not big enough for actual use in a saber, but it looks like they work in blasters just fine."

She cracked a healthy smirk at the look on Atton's face. Disciple looked intrigued, but didn't get to say anything before Atton asked, "So, you never tried these out beforehand?"

A shrug. "Didn't see any reason they wouldn't work."

Atton felt his eye twitch, but chose to ignore it. "Yeah, I'm sure you'd miss me a whole bunch if they blew up, too." Saer almost grinned at that, and the scoundrel chose to wander off of his own accord. "Yeah, I'll meet you guys on the ramp."

"I'll just be in the refresher, then I'll be ready to go," Saer informed them, ducking out of the room with the bloody towel over her arm.

s-n-s

"… Did Vogga even _recognise_ you?"

"If he did, he didn't say anything," Saer mused, fiddling with her electronic journal. "At least he agreed to ship his fuel to Telos once we get rid of Goto."

Atton shook his head at that one, hands in his pockets. "And _that's_ the part I still don't understand."

She glanced over at him through the mess of her hair as she absently moved out of the way of two kids darting between the two of them. Someone chased after them, apologising, but neither Scoundrel or Jedi paid attention. They were both used to the rush and pull of Nar Shadda—Atton having spent years there, and Saer on her third day in a row of fighting her way through the scum collected on the smuggler's moon.

"I mean, isn't the whole point of being on Nar Shadda to, y'know, _not_ get the attention of everyone who's after you?"

She smirked at that, almost like he was amusing her in some way. "No, we're finding Zez-Kai Ell." At the look on his face, she almost laughed. "The Jedi Master with the enormous moustache in the recording."

He rolled his eyes at her, then shrugged. "No, we're doing things like, getting rid of the Soroccan and Exchange's pressure on the refugee camp, or uniting families, or whipping every single Pazaak player in that one Pazaak Den with the password, or bringing droids back to their owners—"

"Or dancing for Hutts to steal all the shit in their warehouse."

Atton made a face. "Hey, we walked right back in there and didn't even get _caught_. I think _that_ should say something about my plans versus yours."

She rolled her eyes at him, almost laughing. "Oh, _please_ tell me you're joking. The only reason we didn't get caught was because Hutts, just like the rest of the galaxy, can't be bothered to remember the face of anyone who dances for them. I'm sure _that_ popped up in your twenty-second master plan somewhere."

He sent her a glance, then grinned. "I'm sure none of those bounty hunters would recognise you if you wore _that_ outfit every day."

"What, and have both you _and_ Disciple go through puberty again? Fat chance, buddy."

He made a face—mostly because of the dream he'd had the night before—but before he could even open his mouth to make a witty comeback, the other topic of conversation popped out of the crowd.

"What's this about an outfit?"

Atton grinned to himself, then swung his arm over Disciple's shoulder. "You see, my good man, me and Saer went and did a little cantina hopping last night…"

"It's not important." Was she blushing, or was it just him? Atton smirked, and he could almost see Disciple's interest in the subject growing.

"She danced for Vogga," Atton continued, regardless of Saer's indigence on the matter. "And the outfit she was wearing? Damn, it's hot."

"It doesn't _matter_, because we're going to-"

"What did it look like?" Disciple blurted, then glanced at Saer and immediately regretted it.

Atton, grinning like a nutcase, absently examined his fingernails. "I have it on the ship, if you'd like to see it…?"

"Wha-?" the look on her face was _priceless_. Pure, sheer and utter victory, on Atton's part. That, and he was _so_ going to get his ass kicked, later, but he decided that this was all worth it. "You said you threw it out!"

"I lied," Atton replied, smirking. "Something you Jedi should be used to, I think."

Saer rolled up one of her sleeves, her left hand clenched into a fist. "Do you enjoy having your scrawny excuse for a spine where it is, Atton? I think not."

Disciple ducked out from underneath the scoundrel's arm and stepped neatly in between the two of them. "I don't think that-"

Atton rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me _you're_ going to stick up for me, now."

Saer smiled, a sadistic smirk reserved for only when she was most serious. "I do, however, remember a conversation about pain sticks."

The colour drained from the brunette's face. "You wouldn't."

"How much are you willing to bet on that one?"

Disciple slowly felt his ability to get them all to walk away from the situation unscathed start to slip away. He figured it was something akin to bleeding to death; and equally as painful.

"How about nothing," he mused, but there was nothing to be done.

Atton's eyes narrowed, the glint of a challenge burning in them. "A date."

Disciple immediately felt his throat close over, and he lost all control over his voice box. Did the man have a death wish!

The surprise flickered in Saer's eyes, and she was immediately caught off-guard by his comment. She opened her mouth, and Disciple felt a twinge of… _something_ when he thought she was going to reject his comment.

"I win, you buy. You win, I buy."

She narrowed her eyes, then, but was kept from speaking when he added, "Winner also picks the time and place."

Saer smirked, the challenge bug darting to her eyes as well. "Start saving your credits, because you're buying the most expensive meal this side of Coresaunt."

Atton returned her own healthy smirk, and Disciple felt just a tad out of the loop. Like he was just there to make sure neither one of them died in the attempt to prove who had the skills to match their egos.

"Isn't there something we should be doing otherwise?" he interjected, almost as a last attempt to make them see common sense.

"Not that I can think of," Saer commented, idly. "I'm sure the planet can manage to solve its own problems, for a while."

Atton nodded, smiling grimly. "So, what are our weapons?"

"Vibro double-blades," she replied, without skipping a beat. "Unless you want to use two of the single-bladed ones."

"Can I just say something?" That from Disciple was ignored.

"Single blades," he replied. "You go ahead with the double." He could already feel old knowledge trying to surface. He might have been disturbed by the revival of old techniques, but it had happened a lot in the past few months, and he simply started to count Pazaak cards in his head again.

"No Force powers on my part," she added immediately. Atton would have thought that put her at a disadvantage, but Disciple had talked to him about the Battle Ring on Dxun, and he seriously doubted it. "Lightsaber forms…?"

"Go ahead," he replied, perhaps too easily. He knew the weaknesses of each form of combat, and how to exploit them. She noticed his surety, and perhaps made a thought to herself not to use them. He would be a little disappointed, but he knew he'd have a hard time at fighting her, regardless. In fact, he'd probably lose.

"I'm sure we could possibly talk around this…?" Disciple tried again, but was ignored.

"Are we heading back to the ship, then?"

Atton nodded, knowing that neither of them had the required equipment on their persons. Hands in pockets, he smirked and turned towards where they'd parked the speeder.

They parked at the Refugee Sector Docks, neither Saer or Atton talking about the fight—Atton was vividly recounting some past Pazaak game to her, and, as usual, he did most of the talking. She might ask the occasional question, but she wasn't one for idle conversation. Disciple, crouching in the back, was ignored.

They parked the speeder and set up the security system, and Disciple took the opportunity (for the brief moment that Atton's mouth was shut) to ask Saer something.

"I must confess, I've been studying the recording of your trial extensively ever since you've given me permission to access it."

She turned to meet his gaze, and again he was forced to look away at the intensity of her eyes. When she'd trained him on Dantooine, her eyes had been the shade of deep blue that most of them remained—but the rim of bright red on the edge of each iris was new. He assumed she had acquired the discolouration during the war. He couldn't see how Atton could stand to look at them for very long; most people couldn't.

She didn't seem to notice that most she spoke to averted their gaze, so Disciple just occupied himself.

"I have been trying to find a deeper meaning behind your exile."

She looked confused at that statement, and Atton sent him a warning look that was ignored. "What do you mean?" she asked, eyes narrowed.

Knowing that he was treading on thin ground, he continued regardless. "Whether you realised it or not, your exile was really your choice."

Atton scowled. "Yeah, well I watched that thing, too. Didn't look like they gave her much of a choice to me."

Disciple nodded knowingly. "Yes, I considered that as well. Traditionally, however, an exiled Jedi can choose whether they wish to accept the council's decision and wander the outer rim, forsaking prolonged contact with all life, or they can choose to-"

"Argue their case," Saer interrupted, casually. "Try to prove them wrong." She had a habit of doing that—anticipating what a person was talking about, and then finishing off their sentences for them. It was annoying if you didn't know her.

Disciple nodded, noticing Saer's apparent lack of interest on the topic. That must have been her defence mechanism, he thought, although he was unsure on the matter. She didn't _need_ to play tough or feign indifference—most of the time she didn't just seem to care about what was going on around her.

"I noticed that you didn't argue your case, once they exiled you. You defended your point of view, when they asked, but you didn't-"

"Look," she snapped, eyes narrowed. "They didn't want me there. I didn't need the Force to see that."

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. Atton almost stepped in between the two of them, but figured Saer would settle for hitting either one of them right about then, so he kept his mouth shut.

Disciple nodded slightly, a gentle movement that caused the expression in Saer's eyes to flicker. "Mical, you're hiding something."

Atton blinked, startled by the sudden use of the name. What, Disciple had a name? And Saer knew it? _Okay, so having an optional name is real cool,_ he thought sarcastically, a slight bit of jealousy tingeing his confusion in the current matter. _Soon, all the kids are going to be calling themselves Saber, or Assassin, and nobody's going to have a decent name because they'll all be 'too cool' to have one._

He sighed. "You're right. I was partially looking for a reason why I had left."

Saer glanced away. Atton wondered if she blamed herself for that.

In the meantime, he decided to interrupt again, with a roll of his eyes. "You know, if you left the Jedi, you probably had a reason. I think it's a little too late to be figuring it out now."

Disciple—Mical?—smiled. "True," he replied, "but as of late I have come to question my decision, just as Saer has come to question her exile."

"If you could refrain from talking about me like I can't hear you…"

"Yeah, well maybe she always did," Atton snapped back. "All it took was a recording to make her say it openly."

"I am standing _right_ here," she muttered.

Disciple smiled. "I have only recently begun second-guessing leaving the Jedi Order, Atton; only since I met Saer again on Dantooine have I begun to question my actions."

Atton's eyes narrowed. He could feel himself start to get angry, but didn't try to keep it in check. "So what, just because Saer shows up, you start 'second-guessing' and 'contemplating on alternate courses'?"

The blonde frowned, tilting his head slightly. "Before I came into direct contact with a member of the Jedi Order, the thoughts of my past were not always on the forefront of my mind."

"Yeah, well Saer's not exactly a Jedi anymore," Atton shot back, clenching his fists. He always seemed to forget that she used to be a Jedi when it was just the two of them. But everyone else had this habit of bringing it up. Why didn't they just admit that Saer had no ties to the damn Jedi, anymore!

"She has regained her use of the Force—and, since she's obviously not Sith, what else do you suppose she'd be, Atton?"

The scoundrel shook his head with a laugh. "Do you honestly think everything's _that_ black and white?"

Disciple looked taken aback by that statement. Atton, with a smirk, decided that he'd already won. "What do you think-" he turned, but stopped when he noticed that the subject of their argument had disappeared. "- Saer?"

They both turned full circle, finally noticing that Saer had left them while they were too busy trying to prove a point to each other to notice her slip away.

"Where the hell did she go?" he muttered, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets, looking like he was about to start off to look for her.

"Wait-!" Disciple hissed. "Do you hear that?"

Atton paused, frowning. When it came to him a few seconds later, it started as more of a feeling than a distinct noise—a pounding in his chest as adrenaline began to creep into his system, the twitch of his fingers as his hands left his pockets of their own accord, reaching instinctively for his blasters. And _then_ he heard the snarl of a lightsaber meeting metal, the whirl of it spinning through the air, and the hiss of it slicing through flesh.

The two men glanced at each other and took off in Saer's direction, Atton shoving past clueless idiots with his shoulders as he pulled out his blasters. Disciple, when stopped by a rather large and menacing-looking Wookie he'd just run head-first into, shoved with the Force and kept running.

He saw the white-silver of her lightsaber before he saw her; but there were also three Trandoshans he had to move out of the way, first. They were down in a flurry of blaster fire, and Saer used the new space to duck out of the way of a low thrust with a double-handled stun device.

_Slavers?_ Atton thought, recognising the device immediately. _What did she do now?_

Disciple's green lightsabers were out with a hiss and he leapt into the fray, ducking and weaving underneath blades and blasterfire alike.

Atton took off a Trandoshan's head before he could slice off one of Disciple's arms, then bounced a shot off Saer's saber into another's eye. She wheeled about, slicing off the abdomen of the opponent currently in her immediate vision while moving to dismember the Trandoshan Atton had shot. Blasterfire took care of another opponent, reducing his head to a hole-filled mass. Disciple force-pushed the last through Saer's outstretched blade.

"If you two are done arguing the mysteries of the galaxy, I think there might be more on the ship," Saer snapped, turning and jogging off down the walkway towards the dormant Ebon Hawk. Jogging for Saer seemed to mean wind-sprinting speed for the rest of the population, and Atton struggled to keep up.

"What did you do now!" he asked, still somewhat behind. Disciple lagged, having to treat a minor injury of his own before following.

She replied as if she were just out for a nice evening stroll. "Would you believe me if I told you nothing?"

"With your reputation? Hell no."

She smirked a little, pulling out her com. "Anyone there?"

A series of frantic beeps and whistles was her only reply, and her eyes narrowed. "On my way, T3."

"What's going on?" Disciple, some distance behind.

"There's a bunch of them on the ship," Saer replied, somehow speeding up, leaving Atton to pull the most ridiculous full-legged sprint in order to even hope to keep up. "Sounds like we stole their landing pad."

Atton rolled his eyes, but had already fallen too far behind to make a snide comment. Saer charged up the cargo ramp, and Atton saw the flash of her lightsaber spinning as she disappeared from sight. He followed behind, whipping his blasters out to either side of him and gunning down a couple of Trandoshans charging out from each hallway. Another slaver whipped himself around, making a lunge for Atton. The scoundrel jumped back against the wall, and the Trandoshan found himself impaled on Disciple's lightsaber. The Jedi kicked him off and used the Force to clear them both an area out of the lizard-men.

_All Trandoshans… what slaving company only hires—_

Atton's eyes widened as he ducked below a stun-stick, swung around the corner ruthlessly. "Shit," he grumbled, blasting the hand that controlled the offending weapon before whipping around said corner. "We've fucking pissed off the Red Eclipse."

He had to admit, Saer's blasters were handy. They seared through any armour without a cortorsiss weave, and had pretty much the same effect as a saber. It bothered him slightly that he was using weapons that were only a couple strips of metal away from being lightsabers, but he shook the awkwardness off with a good kick to another opponent.

He saw the flash of yellow ahead, and made the connection to Visas. The Sith still creeped him out, but at least she had abandoned the traditional red of that order in favour of the yellow. Maybe it meant something to her, but he had no clue.

He bounced some shots of her lightsaber with one blaster, dispatching an attempted attack from behind with another. Visas removed the last in the room, and then Atton took off down the hallway.

The glow of Bao-Dur's mechanical arm was swamped by another grouping of Red Eclipse, accompanied by the green of Disciple's saber. They were fine on their own, it looked like. He darted down another hallway, towards the main room, where he immediately spotted the silver whirl that indicated Saer. Mandalore was blasting down Trandoshans left right and center, but they were more focused on eliminating Saer than the Mandalorian warlord.

Atton ducked under a pincer attack from either side of the doorway, dropping to one hand and launching a kick at one's knees while he sent a few shots at the other's face, knocking them both down. He switched his weight back to his feet in a crouching position, then sent a nice hole through the skull of the second.

He rose, then glanced at the set-up. Most of them were attacking Saer, still, although Mandalore had pulled out two vibroblades and had jumped into the fray to help her. One Jedi was a lot more menacing than a hundred Mandalorians, Atton knew, so he figured that Mandalore wouldn't make much of a difference in the long run to where the scum were pointing their weapons. And Saer was having trouble. One swing of her saber was enough to take down two or three of the slavers, but she didn't have enough room to even do that. She was cornered against the wall, punching and kicking like a madwoman—he recognised some of the Echani techniques in there, but most of it was purely knowing where to hit and how hard to swing. Her saber was deactivated, and she seemed to be using the hilt only, for the moment.

"Need a hand?" he yelled, gunning down one about to drive a weapon through Saer's back. Another in front of her tried a similar technique, but she shoved him into his comrades.

"Or five," she replied in between breaths, her hair falling into even more of a mess across her face as she ducked underneath a swing headed for her neck.

He smirked, dropping about six or seven Trandoshans with a flurry of blasts. He flicked the empty packs out of the weapons and re-loaded, absently sidestepping a Trandoshan who attempted to rush him. When the lizard-man moved his weapon to swing around, Atton dropped and delivered a fully charged blaster shot through his armour.

"Well, between me and Mandalore, there's four…" he smirked, unloading as many blasts as he could manage into the group surrounding Saer before a few of them swarmed him. He gunned down a few of them, but was forced to resort to hand-and-foot contact after a few moments. While he managed to take care of the three who had remained to jump him, Saer had managed to stem the tide of her attackers somewhat, so that she had some space to breathe. Atton raised his blasters again and cleared away three of them before getting the uncanny feeling that he had to duck.

So he did, just in time to avoid a double-bladed stun device. With a backwards glance, he spotted about three more behind him. With an unkind word or two pointed in their direction, he raised the blaster in his right hand and rendered the most immediate threat's brain useless. With his left, he kindly blasted out the kneecaps of the other two. They snarled as he rolled to avoid the falling corpse of the first, their advance postponed until they could grow new bones. Atton was pretty sure that he didn't know much about the random nuances of an alien's physicality, but he was equally as confident that a Trandoshan couldn't find replacement joints in a matter of seconds. He finished his roll by giving himself enough spring to pull back up into a crouch, one knee up and the other on the floor. The blaster in his right hand took care of the wounded lizard-men while he pegged off a few more that were still trying to use their greatly thinned numbers to swamp Saer.

Then the exiled Jedi got enough space to use her saber.

Atton winced a little as she reduced her opponents to nothing more than spare body parts. Spinning and kicking her way through the remaining Trandoshans, the hiss and hum of her lightweapon sent the two slavers who had just come in to turn tail and head for easier prey. Atton kindly ended them with a couple shots to the back of their heads.

As mentioned before, Atton did not pride himself on his knowledge of alien species. He knew a couple of foul words, insults, or other miscellaneous nuances that weren't in Galactic Basic, but other than that he was rather dismal. Saer, while fluent in a few languages, didn't have any use of Trandoshan in her vocabulary. So, they both figured they were lucky that she kept the Sonic Imprint Sensor on hand, as it immediately began to translate what the Trandoshan behind them was saying.

"You have crossed the Red Eclipse—we will make you pay."

She raised an eyebrow, kicking at a carcass with her foot. "What, like they did?"

Atton looked at the room around them, and smirked. "I think you'll have to run a tab."

Mandalore fell into a stance that betrayed the look of his armour. "If you two would knock off the smart-assed comments and fight the bastards…"

Saer smirked, tossing her saber from hand to hand. "It's in the books, then." She caught it with her left and deftly spun it, whipping the weapon behind her form and back in front again. "Looks like I owe you an ass-kicking."

The two Trandoshan on either side of the leader—Cahhmakt, he remembered dimly from somewhere—raised weapons to charge the exile, but a steady hail of blasterfire encouraged them to keep it a duel. Those that didn't drop pulled out their own blasters and returned fire, and Atton ducked into the hallway to avoid learning what dying by blaster felt like. He leaned out and took care of one that looked like he was going to go for Saer as Mandalore contended with a couple who were idiots enough to take him on.

In reality, the battle itself was rather anticlimactic; a few more shots and the rest of the slavers were done for, and when Atton thought to settle in and watch Saer to try and pinpoint a specific technique or style to her fighting, she whipped around in a blur of movement and sent Cahhmakt's head rolling.

She blew at the hair dangling in front of her face, then turned to face him. She raised an eyebrow at his position, leaning rather casually against the wall, and commented, "Cute. All you're missing is the cup of Java."

He grinned loosely with a shrug as she deactivated her saber. "What can I say? Holovids where pretty women fight are my favourite."

She rolled her eyes, hooking the weapon back onto her belt. "No, you like the part where they 'kiss and make up' in the end."

Even Mandalore had to chuckle about that one. Atton, not at all perturbed about how much she understood a man's fantasies, jammed his blasters back into their holsters. "Well, the corny lines don't do anything for me."

Bao Dur and Disciple walked into the room, the former limping. "Are they all gone?" Disciple asked, glancing every one of them over for injury momentarily.

"It would seem that way," Queen bitch of the galaxy remarked, slithering from her hiding place… wherever it was that she went off to hide while they were fighting. Atton sent her a look of contempt, but she ignored it. "Although I find it rather peculiar that someone managed to land us in an area currently claimed by a slaving company…"

"Well, not anymore," Atton added, poking a corpse with his foot. "Space, Saer, couldn't you leave these guys in one piece? This is going to be a pain in the ass to clean up."

"Whiner," she shot back, "You just can't appreciate my artistic abilities when it comes to slaughtering pointlessly." She glanced over at Disciple, who looked a little pale. Bao Dur didn't look too good, either, now that Atton actually paid attention. Neither of them could quite shake off killing on large scales—Bao Dur preferred to put the War behind him, and Mical… was just naïve. While Bao-Dur looked to be the only one injured of the pair, Mical had obviously exhausted himself trying to heal the Zabrak on his own during the fight.

"All right, I'll see you two in the med lab." She looked at the rest of the crew, but didn't seem to find anything wrong, and they watched her walk towards the dormitories. "We'll clean up in a few minutes."

Dragging the bodies out of the Hawk and throwing them over the railing wasn't as difficult at Atton had thought it would be—then again, having three Jedi on the ship did help some, even if Disciple looked more exhausted than the man probably realised. Even T3 pitched in, whirring and clicking as he used an impromptu plow to shove the bodies. When it was all said and done, the two men stood together, watching the space where the last Trandoshan had fallen.

"Do you find it hard," the blonde Jedi began, slowly, "to… cope with killing? Ending a life?"

Atton rolled his eyes. "These guys weren't exactly prime citizens, you know."

Disciple shrugged. "I suppose, but… What if they had families? What if someone was relying on them to come home?"

"They knew the risks."

Both turned to look at Saer, who was swirling a cup of Java, two others floating casually beside her. The steam rising off the liquid of the mug in her hand caused Atton to make a face. She took hers with a load of sugar, no milk, and hot enough to scald the face off a Rodian. He'd made her a cup or two over a game of Pazaak, and every time she still went back and added more of the sweetening crystals.

Disciple frowned, taking his cup out of the air. He sniffed it, then took a swig. Atton snatched his and downed it in a gulp, completely used to her habit of carrying objects in the air when she ran out of hands.

"They knew what they were heading into, associating with Slavers, working as them. Don't feel sorry for them, Disciple. No one goes into the slavery business to protect anyone."

The younger man looked a little less than satisfied with that answer, then nodded and politely excused himself. Saer and Atton watched him walk up the ramp.

"You'd think none of the Jedi were ever useful, looking at that guy," he muttered darkly, wishing he hadn't drank his Java so fast; his trigger fingers were twitching.

"It's different, with Jedi," she replied, calmly. She took another swig, and Atton winced. He could _feel_ the heat rising off that thing, and it made him wonder how she didn't burn herself. "All Jedi feel death when it's around them—the rush in life force as it leaves their bodies…"

He watched her for a moment, and she shrugged. "At first, you really start to imagine little scenarios in your mind—you play house, giving them a family and a name, an intricate story for each life you end." She smirked bitterly, eyes dark as her hair spilled unchecked in front of her face. "I think it's worse for him, because of the way he connects with the Force."

When he looked confused, she continued. "He's a Consular. That means he has a strong connection to the Force in himself and in other beings around him. A Sentinel like Visas finds the Force in objects around them—it helps them blend into their surroundings, finding and drawing upon the energy that lives naturally in the world around them, and depending on the circumstances that arise they can become stronger or weaker."

He raised a brow. "And you?"

"The Guardians." She smiled, wryly. "We find the Force within ourselves; it manifests itself in our bodies, and the stronger our connection with the Force becomes, the more we understand our innermost workings and the faster we can move, the stronger we become."

He paused a moment, calculating all of this. "So… Disciple feels their deaths more distinctly than, say, A Guardian would?"

She nodded, content to not have to explain it further. He frowned a little in confusion, then asked, "So, how come I've never heard of it?"

"It's not like it's a big secret or anything, everyone at the Enclaves knows it," she complied, looking out at the decay of Nar Shadda. "But it's just something every Jedi has been told too many times, so we don't really remember that we actually have to explain it to someone else."

He stared at her. "So, what, the Jedi keep secrets unintentionally?"

She smiled again, but it was half-hearted. She looked down at the ground, as if she felt a blow to her pride every time Atton mentioned that he, personally, hated the Jedi. "No, not really. No one ever asks, that's all."

He watched her for a little while, the bright rim around her eyes blazing in the fading light. The runway lights began to brighten, and the effect was gone. Her face was bathed in the pale, unhealthy glow they offered, and he momentarily saw the sickly complexion of a Sith hiding underneath her hair. He looked away.

She laughed, suddenly, the sound light and soft, and she looked up at the direction the sky was hiding in, past all the towering skyscrapers. "I remember…" Her face was highlighted by the last remaining flickers of light, and all the skin that was subject to the runway's unnatural glow held the image of a Sith Lord.

He watched her, all at once entranced and utterly mortified that he could associate her with the Sith.

"I used to sneak out of the Jedi enclave a nights, for a bit of excitement. I always hung out at a cantina, and the bartender was nice so he kept an eye on me. He watched my drink for me and kept the local creeps away. Not like there's many to be found, on a planet like Dantooine."

Atton remembered the mercenaries, the untrusting glares of its citizens, and the salvagers, and thought that it must have been a very different place when she was growing up.

"One night was busy—a storm had blown over, and a couple of transports were stuck. I was ten at the time. I was at the Pazaak tables, and this creep walked up to me." She touched her lightsaber, and Atton looked at it for a long moment, admiring the twisting combination of black and silver alloys.

"Long story short, he wouldn't go away and I threw him across the room. Through the bar."

He stared, open-mouthed at her. "Well, his bottom half stayed where it hit the counter. His upper body didn't stop until it hit the wall."

When he didn't reply, she laughed. "The first thing I did was switch on a stealth-field generator and hide in a corner. Kavar found me there, and got me out without being seen."

Atton didn't find the same humour she did in the subject, but figured that the guy deserved it. "How much trouble did you get in."

She smiled, her eyes distant. "None." At the look on his face she elaborated. "Vrook was _furious_ about that. "Kavar told him I'd learned my lesson, and wouldn't lose my control again."

Atton smirked a little at that. He hadn't seen much of the stodgy old stick in the mud, but his impressions of him were not so spectacular. Something along the lines of a severe lack in manners. That, and the old creep was exactly what everyone expected the Jedi to be these days.

He ran a hand through his hair, dark eyes darting aside. When he turned to ask her a question, she was gone. He frowned, then turned back to the ship, where she was walking up the ramp. She stopped, let down her hair, then started to run her fingers through it in an attempt to brush it as she started walking again.

_Some things never change,_ he thought wryly as he followed her into the Hawk.

s-n-s

"You were the one recording me, not Disciple."

Atton paused at a turn in the hallways of the Hawk, Saer's accusing tone of voice giving him ample reason. Who…?

"So you found out," the old woman's scratchy alto. Atton figured that the look on his face must have been something, because he automatically got the wrong idea about the whole situation.

"Yeah, I did," was Saer's reply, and Atton figured that if she was going to lop off the witch's head, then he wanted to be around to see it. He stayed put, however, instinct telling him that he wanted to keep out of it for the time being.

When there was no reply from the older woman, Saer asked, "I suppose I get a lesson on this one, too?"

"You are becoming too close with them."

Saer snorted. "You've said this before." Atton could almost feel the rage burning from the blonde and gnawed on his lip, knowing full well that the old hag could feel it too. "Do I get another 'lesson learned' on this one, or are you just going to stand there?"

Kreia's voice was sharp and commanding, although it was a tone no one would listen to. "And neither do I approve of this relationship you have with the Fool."

Atton's heart thudded against his chest, although he couldn't fathom why.

Saer half-laughed at that one, although he could tell by the tone in her voice that it had set her off a little. "Who, Atton?"

"Do not think that you can hide the time you're spending with him from me. It is not healthy to be associating so closely with those you travel with."

He could tell Saer rolled her eyes, even without seeing it. "Kreia, I think I'm old enough to decide whether or not I want to spend time with my friends."

"Yes, I'm sure that thought has crossed my mind as well." She sounded perturbed as she continued, "As it stands, however, the relationships you are building are dangerous—you have no intentions of manipulating those you gather around you, and if they choose to betray you, I fear that you would fail to see it coming."

"I'll deal with that when and if it comes up." The sound of Saer's footsteps started up again, as if she was walking away.

"Yes, and you've done a fine job with those situations in the past."

Silence. A dead and utter silence that was screaming ten years' worth of pain and agony, like a wound not completely healed ripped open again. Atton frowned.

When Saer spoke again, her voice was low, and the tone she used made Atton wince. She'd never talked so… lacking in emotion around him. "You have _no_ _right_."

She stormed out of the room and past him, then headed directly for the ramp out to the docks. Atton, startled, paused for a moment before following her. She was in a dangerous mood, again…

He caught the old hag's disapproving look, and he rolled his eyes. "Keep your Jedi 'wisdom' to yourself. She's pissed and I'm going to keep her from doing anything incredibly stupid." With that, he took off after her.

She was walking, albeit a little fast, but he still had to jog to catch up with her. "Hey," he called out as he slowed down to a walk, somewhat distressed when she didn't turn around. "Talk about a witch, hey?"

She grunted at him, noncommittal. "You heard all that?"

He shrugged, falling into step beside her. "Yeah."

They were silent for a while, walking side-by-side, and Atton had to wonder what Kreia thought was going on between the two of them. Sure, she was hot… and he had to admit that there were times when he found himself fantasising about her… but she had never shown any interest in him. As confused about her as he could sometimes be, there was nothing going on between the two of them.

"I need a drink," Saer interrupted his train of thought, her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets.

He smiled. "I know just the place…"


	5. Determination

**Drenched  
**_by shike77_ ****

Chapter V  
_Determination_

**Notes:** This chappy isn't one of my best ever, but I did struggle through it. (It didn't go as planned, but I'll see what you guys think) I'm hoping things'll get easier after I say good-bye to Nar Shadda. Even though the planet itself intrigues me, pretty much all my plans for this fic are down the road. On Korriban. And not on Onderron. I can see myself rushing to the end, here. I don't want to, but it's probly gunna happen. Eh.

There's a tidbit in here on weapon training—Kudos goes to my Fencing instructors, Dave, Alex and Dennis. I miss that class so much… Ah, well. Maybe I'll go back to the CFC next year. My foil is looking rather lonely over in the corner of my room…

And thank you so much for all the reviews. Every one of you rock my world. :hugs everyone: I wish I could promise you a swift next chapter, you guys deserve it. But I'm so busy… Performance second last week of April:crosses fingers: Ai, this will be stressful.

Is it a bad sign when your best friend calls you a nerf-hearder? And she's only played a little of KOTOR I?

* * *

Kavar walked into the meditation room, watching the lights flicker on with a wave of his hand. Lost deep in thought, he paced idly around the cushions, as if trying to find one that suited him. Not likely; he preferred the floor, when he did use the conventional methods of meditation. 

Something stirred in the corner, and when the Jedi Master paused, he could hear the slow breathing of someone sleeping. Soft, barely audible, the sound of someone who knew how to be silent so well they did it automatically, without even thinking about it. In spite of this, the Force swirled around her, uncontrolled and raw in form, so strongly and persistent that once you saw it, you couldn't ignore it.

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands resting at her sides, head drooping, and most definitely asleep. Kavar recognized her immediately as one of the children who had stowed away on the ship both himself and Vrook were taking to Dantooine. Although her skin was raw with a recent scrubbing, her hair shone like soft gold and the red streaks had faded considerably, she still retained her rougeish looks by wearing clothing six sizes too large and letting her hair fall messily in front of her face. Which was harder, since it was so clean.

He tapped her on the shoulder, smiling softly. She started awake, blinking blearily. The darkest shade of blue eyes imaginable, he noticed now that her hair fell every which way when she moved and wasn't stuck in one place by the grease and grime of a hard life.

She slurred something completely incoherent, but he could have sworn he picked up a 'Mazzer Vazz' somewhere in there. He couldn't resist a smile; the girl was obviously used to the meditation charade by now. Although, with the way the currents of the Force flowed in and out of her, he found it no surprise that she'd have trouble clearing her mind and focusing the traditional way.

When her eyes focused on his face, they narrowed in temporary confusion, then widened again as she jumped back.

"Wha-?" she recovered from her initial shock quickly, however, and moved to scold him. "Master Kavar, I was tryin' to medimitate. An' I think I got it, too, but you had to int'rupt me and now I have to start all over again."

The Jedi Master couldn't help but smile. She scowled at the expression on his face, scrunching up her own. "Guess that 'there is no emotion' crap really is a load of bantha shit, then."

He shook his head, still smiling. "Jedi shouldn't swear, Disciple…?"

"Saer. Saer Zeyl. And I ain't no Jedi."

He dropped from his crouching position into a casual sit.. "And you weren't meditating. You were sleeping."

She made a face, and he thought that she looked remarkably like a kath hound pup when she did. "Well, fuck."

He smiled, crossing his legs and letting his hands fall to rest on his knees. "I assume this is not new to you."

She brushed irritably at her hair, which she obviously was still unused to being clean, then blurted, "I don't get it."

He waited, patiently, for her to ellaborate, and she did. "I mean, this whole… calm, thing. It might be my fault, but whenever I close my eyes and stop focusing on everything that's in front of me…" she hesitated, but Kavar was silent. She seemed to approve of this, and continued, "When I'm trying to tell myself to shut up, it's like I can feel everything else around me. And everything's just so… not loud here, it's like the hum of a hyperdrive. It makes me fall asleep."

Kavar felt a twinge of sadness that a child would attribute a hyperdrive to a lullaby instead of a parent's voice, but there was nothing to be done about it, so he patiently placed that thought on a mental shelf for later consideration.

"There are some Jedi," he began, slowly, "who can achieve a sort of 'moving meditation.' Activities that they are familiar with become as instinctual as breathing, and they have… 'blanked out' while practicing fighting or repairing machinery." He paused there, letting this words sink in. "I have experience with this type of meditation-"

"What's so special about it, anyway?" she blurted. "I mean, I've never heard of Jedi running around, then stopping and going 'om' or whatever and bad guys dropping like flies around them."

He smiled at that thought, the mental picture more amusing than he cared to admit. Her description was uncannily similar to the rare technique of battle meditation—with one or two key differences, of course. But that was a lesson for another day.

"Meditation helps a Jedi to connect with the force; through it, we center ourselves, take away the presence of the world around us, and see deeper into what the force really is." He stopped there, considering for a moment, then spoke again, "I could train you to meditate using basic fighting techniques-"

"Really! You'd do that!"

He smiled, reminding himself to teach the girl not to interrupt others. "- If you wish," he finished, nodding.

She gave a small 'whoop' of joy as she jumped to her feet, then tackled the Jedi Master in a brief hug. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou!" She then jumped to her feet again, grinning. "When do we start?"

He smiled at her. "Where are you supposed to be, right now?"

"What time is it?" she asked, pulling back her sleeve to reveal a rather large collection of smudged notes on her right arm.

He glanced at his wristpiece. "13:00."

She switched arms. The writing on her left arm was the messiest scrawl he'd ever seen, even when compaired to what had been on her right. She squinted at it, decded that she couldn't read it, then shrugged. "Nowhere special."

He smiled at that, catching a decent glimpse of the characters on her arm and realized that they weren't even in basic. "What language is that?" he asked, curious.

"Wha? Oh, this," she pulled back a sleeve and held out her arm for him to examine. "Some of it's Cathar, and some of it's Twi'lek. I think that one's Huttese, and that might be Bith… Oh, that I know's Duros…"

He smiled again, examining the letters carefully. Most of them were poor copies of their original language, but he supposed she could interpret them fine enough. "Where did you learn these?"

"Well, the Boss taught me a lot of Cathar. I can even swear in it, too." She held a great pride in that statement, and Kavar decided not to coment. "And Haelyhh was teaching me Twi'lek, too. Although most of it just don't make sence. The rest are from ships we hitched a ride on."

"You never learned to read Basic?"

She made a face. "What, the stuff we're talkin'? Nope."

He nodded, sagely. "I suppose that's why you're not using a datapad for your schedule."

At the guilty grin on her face, he almost laughed. "Y'see, I was attacked by these Ninja Gizkas…"

s-n-s

Kavar was jolted out of his thoughts at the sound of the door opening and closing. Queen Talia entered the throne room with the light-footed steps of one befitting her station. Her eyes were darting about the massive chamber, watching for assassins, as if Vaklu would dare stage another attack on her friend's life. That, Kavar figured, was unlikely. One could fool a Jedi by hiding in a crowded room, but when there were few energies to distinguish from each other, it was difficult to catch them off-guard.

He bowed as she came by, but she waved the gesture off. The trade of formality and acknowledgement of friendship was a habit to them both, so much that neither really recognized that they did it. She paced, absently, then flopped onto her throne with as little royal grace as possible. "I've secured passage for your friend, but I don't know how to contact her. I don't even know what she _looks_ like, Kavar." She fiddled with her headpiece, eyes narrowed. One of her hands went momentarily to her mouth, but she yanked it away before she could start chewing on her nails. She had a hard time with that, but she was slowly getting out of the habit.

"I believe that we might be able to contact her on Dxun…"

The Queen frowned, jolted out of whatever thoughts she'd sunk into. "Dxun? But no one's been on that moon since the Wars."

"There have been rumours of Mandalorians regrouping on the jungle moon," Kavar ellaborated, ignoring the look on the woman's face as he spoke. "Intelligence reports that my friend's ship was forced to land on Dxun, _and_ that Vaklu sent a ship to its surface to search for her. They retreated when their scouts never returned."

The Queen shook her head. "But that does not explain everything. If your friend fought in the war, then why would she be willing to work with the Mandalorians now?"

He sat on the steps leading up to her throne, resting his chin on one of his hands, propped up on his knee. "She always was a strange one," he mused, touching a pocket in his robes. "But there was a Mandalorian in her company when we met in the Cantina."

"Mandalorians have been reduced to bounty hunting and wandering the Galaxy," the Talia replied, tersely. "She could have just hired one to remain in her company. A body guard."

_Saer never liked body guards_, he thought wryly. _She always felt like they were an insult to her abilities._

"I recognized that armour from texts I've read on the Mandalorians," he sat forwards a bit, dropping his hand from his chin. "It was Mandalore's."

A sharp intake of breath came from the Queen. She stood and began pacing, her soft boots padding on the stone floor. "They say there was a Mandalorian in the company of the Jedi Revan…"

He nodded. "Revan could very well have appointed a new Mandalore."

Talia didn't seem to like that idea. The Mandalorian War was still fresh in her mind, although she had been nothing but a child when it came crashing down on Onderron. "And we're encouraging this because…?"

Kavar smiled. "They pose no threat. They are far too busy trying to rebuild their own people than to be taking over yours."

She was momentarily relieved at this, then narrowed her eyes. "How do you propose we contact these Mandalorians, then…?"

He cast his gaze to the ceiling and smiled. "Just give me a shuttle and a starport visa, and they won't be able to ignore me."

s-n-s

Everyone had heard the argument between Kreia and Saer but Disciple. None of them really knew what to make of it. Bao Dur was examining the half-repaired droid the General had found in the ruins on Dantooine when it had started. The old woman creeped him out, and he was perfectly fine when she chose to ignore him. General Saer and her constantly argued over the little things, though; the old woman had practically flipped when Saer mouthed off some begger looking for credits, then tossed a few into his hand when he persisted. She didn't like being 'goody-two-shoes', as she put it, but couldn't really explain her desire to do good, however well-hidden it was. He'd suggested that perhaps there was some Jedi left in her after all, and she'd waved him off. Just like he'd known she would.

Kreia, however, refused to be waved off. The old woman would goad the General into arguing with her, unhappy unless she had a solid reason for Saer's actions—and she would never give one. But this conversation was unexpected. Bao Dur knew that Atton wanted Saer—he had to admit that he was surprised when Atton had approached him about the matter, on their second night aboard the Ebon Hawk, en-route to Dantooine. But it had slowly started to become obvious afterwards; especially after Disciple joined their company. He'd never spoken to the General about it, but he figured that she might have known these things of her own accord. Maybe she didn't mind—she seemed to thouroughly enjoy Atton's company, and when she wasn't helping him repair the ship, she was playing Pazaak with the scoundrel. Or maybe she didn't notice. She seemed to act like there was nothing going on between the two of them. A relationship was a good thing for her, though; she needed to relax. She was always too uptight, and maybe a romantic—or purely sexual—interest in someone would be a good outlet for her stress.

Disciple had come out of the refresher three minutes after Saer had stormed off the Hawk, followed by Atton. "Everyone seems disturbed," he commented, a little confused. "Why?"

_Unlike_ Atton, Disciple had been completely unable to hide his feelings for the General. While Bao Dur was not human, he had spent enough time around them to know that they tended to fall in love on a far more regular basis than the rest of the species in the Galaxy. Having two humans of the opposite sex in a confined space was enough to cause some stir—but when there was three, things were bound to get worse.

"Kreia and the General fought again," he replied, calmly. This was nothing new to the entire ship, and he figured that Disciple didn't need to know the reason why.

The blonde human frowned, confused. "This is not unusual," he stated, almost sounding amused, "but where have Saer and Atton gone?"

The kid was naïve, Saer had complained, but he wasn't stupid. He knew that there was something going on, and wasn't going to let up until he had some sort of answer. Bao Dur shrugged. "Atton's off to make sure she doesn't do anything she'll regret."

The Consular frowned. "Was she that upset?"

"Not that she'd admit it," came Mandalore's comment as he entered the room. Bao Dur shot him a look, but the warlord continued, regardless. "She caught the old witch crawling around in her head."

Disciple's eyes widened. "That… is peculiar. I had thought that Kreia respected Saer too much to be reading her mind."

"The old one greatly respects Saer," came Visas' comment, from where she'd been working on her lightsaber at the workbench. "However, through the bond she and Saer share, she is more often than not subject to flashes of memory, nightmares, or patterns of thought that none of us can detect. I believe that her curiosity to know more about the events she'd witnessed drove Kreia to investigate further."

"But, what would Kreia want to know about Saer that she hasn't already told us?" Disciple wondered, brows furrowed in thought. "She went to war, yes, but so did countless others…"

"There's always a backstory, kid," Mandalore interrupted, dryly. "Everyone always has some dark secret that they'd rather not let anyone know about. _Especially_ Jedi."

The Disciple still seemed skeptical for a moment, but his retort died on his lips before he could say anything, an idea lighting up his eyes. He paused for a moment, then frowned. He excused himself rather suddenly from the conversation and walked off down the hallways.

"What's eating him?" Bao Dur wondered, and Mandalore shrugged.

"Must be a Jedi thing."

s-n-s

Atton was not quite sure how, but they wound up fighting. Not just a barb with words; the actual bout they'd bet on earlier. In a sparsely-populated corner of the sector they faced off, starting by making slow circles around the other. Atton counted possibilities instead of cards as his feet went through the movements, so many scenarios were running through his head. Saer was silent, her eyes narrowed and some of her hair already falling out of the braid she'd thrown it into a minute beforehand.

When they moved it was in sync, their bodies twisting and winding towards and away from the other, testing the motions of any battle plan either had come up with—after that initial moment of conflict, Atton scratched the plan he had in mind and set about selecting another one. She was far too skilled with the double-bladed variant of weaponry for anyone to be able to catch her hilt with two single ones. Unperterbed, he sifted through old memories as they both settled into circling again.

There was something about the spot Saer had chosen that caused his heart to beat just a little faster… something was nagging at the corner of his mind, driving the adrenaline through his system with a deep-rooted urgency that was hard to ignore. Whether or not it was affecting Saer, he couldn't tell—he really didn't have time before she rushed him again, her blade held low, the tip towards the ground.

He moved to the side, and when she spun and whipped her weapon around behind her, Atton caught her blade with his just long enough to stop it, then ducked underneath their arms and used his other to throw a hit towards her side. Saer twisted out of the way, pulling her blade back and shifting out of range. They both started to circle again.

Atton waited for a moment, catching his breath. She was doing some of the same things he'd seen when she was dancing with him, just the other night…

He lunged forwards, his blades crossed. When she moved her own weapon into a vertical position as if to block his attack that way. Knowing that any attempt of twisting her vibro double-blade would only result in his disarming, he seperated his blades and made an attack on either side of hers. She spun her weapon, twisting his own blades around each other, and Atton didn't have time to dislodge them before dodging a fierce kick aimed in his direction. He dropped the sword in his left hand long enough for it to fall away from the other, then caught it and pivoted on his back heel, bringing both weapons around towards her left hip. She half spun her weapon and deflected his attack with the blade closest to the ground, then spun her weapon over her arm, the blade headed for Atton's face. He snapped the blade in his left hand up to block, pivoting on his back foot and moving his right to deflect the attack she made on his hip with the back end of her blade.

They pulled away, circling again. Saer had a knowing look in her eyes, some inner question answered through those traded blows. _She's testing me,_ Atton thought, eyes narrowed. _Why?_

Before he could even begin to ponder, she was at him again, her weapon lowered for a thrust at his lower torso. His right blade was raised to deflect her attack, but she reversed her blades and sent the opposite blade spinning towards his knee. He moved a step to the side, using his left to protect his opposite leg as she twisted her weapon in an attempt to hit his thigh. Their weapons met with a resounding clang and then jumped away as Saer switched her grip on her weapon so that she might block the attack Atton made with his left, aimed towards her chest. They pulled away and started circling again, faster, like they were driven by a beat that they both _felt_ instead of heard. Faster, faster… Suddenly they were moving so fast that they were just fighting in a circle. Back and forth, their movements guiding them one way or the other around the shape.

As Atton darted in for another attack, he took a sudden step backwards and pivoted on that heel, bringing the weapon in his right hand towards her hip. He pivoted again after she blocked with the flat of one of her blades, aiming for her torso on her other side. She dodged, sidestepping and turning all in one motion, bringing her blade around in the most complex twisting motion Atton had ever seen. He ducked under the attack aimed at his neck, then snapped his left blade in front of his face to block the back half of her sword. He feinted with his right towards her thigh, then slashed across her torso with his left. She spun her blade deflty, knocking the threatening weapon out of his hand. At that precise moment, he used the vibroblade in his left hand to knock her own weapon off balance, and she was forced to drop it as she caught the blade she'd pried from his grasp. There was a momentary pause in which Saer was obviously fighting back the urge to call her blade back to her hand with the Force, and Atton took that opportunity to rush her, one hand held out and his weapon aiming for her neck.

She collided with the wall with a snarl, bringing the weapon she'd commandeered about so that she could cut off his neck with a flick of the wrist. When they both stopped moving, his weapon was in a similar position. He looked down, raised an eyebrow, and asked, out of breath, "… Did we ever decide what happens in a stalemate?"

She smirked, cocky as ever. "What makes you think this is over?" Atton found some satisfaction in finding her panting as well.

"Well, for one, if either of us moves, we're both dead," he mused, glancing at their surroundings momentarily. "And for another…" he looked back at her and the words died on his lips as his eyes met hers.

He wasn't quite sure why he hadn't noticed it before, but she was _stunning_ in her element. The wild exhileration of battle shone in her eyes with a passion, probably fed by adrenaline or her own individual lusts for the action that battle gave her. There was a slight sheen to her skin that seemed to reflect even the smallest amounts of light, and the way she was smiling…

He was still staring when she kissed him.

The movement had taken him quite by surprise. At first, he thought his imagination had gotten the better of him. It had taken him precious seconds to discover that her body was pressing closer to his, and he really _was_ standing there. But when she started to pull away, he caught her lips, fighting to keep that connection between them. His weapon slipped out of his grasp, almost of its own accord, and his hands flew to her shoulders, slowly removing her jacket as they ran down the length of her upper body, coming to rest at her hips.

She broke away again, panting. "I win," she breathed, and Atton realised with a start that she still gripped her weapon. He stared at it, then looked back up at her, then started to laugh. Figures the only time Saer would even _feign_ interest in him was when she wanted to win a duel… But why did he feel so _hurt_?

He looked down at her again, laughter dying. He traced the scar on her cheek with a knuckle. Followed the line down to her lips.

_Fuck_, he thought sharply, _Kreia's right._

She was about to say something when the com beeped. Bao Dur's voice came over it, genuinely confused. T3's rapid noise-making could be heard in the background. "General, Atton, do you read me?" Her eyes darted away from his, and she bit her lip.

"We can ignore him," he whispered, voice strained. "We can get lost here. Just for a little while."

She hesitated. Weighing her options.

"General, Atton… are you two there?"

Saer refused to look at him, pressing a button on her com. "I read you, Bao Dur." Was it just him, or did she sound resigned… dissappointed, even?

"We've received a transmission," he informed her, perhaps not noticing the change in her tone. "It's for you, but I think everyone should hear this."

"All right. We're on our way."

She pressed a button to turn off the device, then looked back up at Atton with an alologetic smile. "Later," she promised softly, then slipped out underneath his arm and went to retrieve her fallen blade. She turned back to face him, smiling. "You _do_ owe me dinner, after all."

He stood there for a moment, watching her turn the corner, smiling. Things were starting to look up, after all…

Unnoticed, two Twi'lek detatched themselves from the shadow of a doorway, above them, and started to trail behind them.

s-n-s

Kavar stood casually, allowing the warriors to search him, holding his lightsabers out in front of him for them to take, if they wished. They did not, seemingly content with his compliance. The Mandalorian in front of him was not the same one who'd accompanied Saer to Iziz, which dissappointed him, but he knew that the warrior clan would not consider him worthy enough to speak with their leader. He was only a man, afterall, who claimed he knew an Exiled Jedi. Who he suspected they had helped reach Onderron's surface.

"Do you know Saer Zeyl?"

The unspoken 'Exile' rang in his mind, accusatory in tone, but he shoved it away. He had done what he needed to do, and what he had believed was right. Even in Exiling his Padawan and close friend, he had followed the code. Always following, never straying, no matter how much it had hurt him. Or her.

The Mandalorian replied, warily, "Yeah, and what of it?"

Kavar smiled. It was obvious from the man's tone that he didn't like her—she had probably done something humiliating to him, or beat him in battle. "I have a message for her, if I could speak to her."

"She's not here," was the grudging comment. "She's gone with Mandalore to gather more warriors to our clan."

The Jedi Master highly doubted that, clipping his weapons back onto his belt. Her presence, however, was not in the camp. Highly unsurprising; he hadn't expected her to sit around and wait to speak to him. She had probably left to find someone else to pester… or kill. Her restlessness had not left her during her Exile, but he had senced it had deepened, during their brief meeting. He hadn't expected it to. Saer wasn't going to stop living on the edge, no matter what was done to her.

"Do you know how I can contact her?" he asked, hoping beyond hope that they would trust him enough with her location.

"_I_ can contact her," the Madalorian replied, dutifully. "I can relay your message, but whether or not she chooses to respond is of no concequence."

Kavar had figured that would be the responce. The fact that they were unwilling to let him know where Saer was meant one of two things; either she had impressed them enough that they were loyal, or they were jerking his chain. Unphazed by the current turn of events, he continued, "Then tell her that the Queen has arranged safe passage to Onderron for her."

The Mandalorian was silent for a moment, but then nodded. "I'll do that," he replied, as if that made him content. "But I suggest you leave and wait for her on the planet, Jedi."

Kavar nodded, turned on his heel and left. _Nothing else to do,_ he reminded himself, taking a deep breath. _Nothing to do but wait._

He'd waited years for her to return—surely another couple of days couldn't be that harsh?

s-n-s

"Stand like this," Kavar told her, spreading his weight in between his feet . One foot in front, the other behind. "Bend your legs."

She complied, wobbled a little, but soon found her center. She raised an eyebrow at him, her hands flopped at her side. "Uh, is this it?"

He smiled, walking over to one of the weapons' racks in the training room. "Are you-" There was the sound of her body colliding with the floor, accompanied by her small 'oof' of complaint. "-balanced?"

"Yeah, perfectly," she replied quickly, and his heightened sences picked up the sound of her scrambling to her feet. He pulled two soft wood stalves off of their racks, then turned around and tossed one at the girl.

"Good," he replied as she caught it, albeit rather clumsy. She almost fell over again, so uneasily she held the stance. "Your feet are too close," he informed her idly, and she corrected that. "Bend your knees more." She bit her lip, but complied. He nodded, satisfied, then crossed the rest of the distance over to her.

He fixed her grip on the staff, remembering that she was left-handed. Once he was sure she had it down all right, he moved the staff and her arms so that the weapon was held horizontally in front of her. "This is to block a basic vertical attack."

She nodded. Made the motion again. Kavar corrected her mistakes throughout, and she tried again. Pretty good.

He slowly used his own staff to show her a vertical attack. She raised her weapon, shakily, to block his, as he had shown her. He nodded, smiling, encouraging. Beaming at the support, the next time he 'attacked,' he weapon rose to meet his more confidantly. After a few more attempts, she was up to speed.

He showed her two more blocks, and each one she learned faster than the other. _A quick learner,_ he thought, watching her block each attack of his consecutively.

"Now, I'm going to take it a step further…" her eyes widened, and she grinned. "I want you to learn how to anticipate my attacks, because I'm not going to tell you in which order I'll be delivering them."

Her jaw dropped. "How'm I s'posed to do _that_!"

"Watch my body," he replied, falling into the fighting stance. "The Shii-Cho form is easy to detect movement in; it is the simplest of the forms, and is normally used when outnumbered. As a result, the movements are large and sweeping; you should be able to clearly see which attack I'm going to use, in time. Now watch my torso; my shoulders," He paused there to move his arms, and he noted how closely she was watching. She'd maintained that concentration throughout their entire session. "… will give away the movement of my arms. My hips…" he shifted position, like he would during the attack, "will signal a change in my stance."

She nodded. "Your shoulders lift up before your arms, and your hips shift before your feet do."

"Impressive," he replied, smiling. "Now, watch for the horizontal attack…"

She was off to a shaky start, and more than once Kavar had to stop himself before he hit her. Occasionally she would catch a delayed movement on his part and their weapons would meet, and her confidance began to build from there. Slowly, she caught each movement as he made them, until she was finally snapping her weapon into place before he'd even completed the attack. At which point in time he'd promptly changed the direction of his weapon and stopped it as it hovered near her right thigh.

"Now you're blocking too soon," he corrected, smiling. "You have to time it so that your opponent doesn't catch onto what your doing and counter your block."

She made a face, settling back into her position and gripping her staff. "All right, so, how do I do that?"

Kavar glanced at his wristpiece and winced. They'd been at it for three hours… he was going to be late for his meeting… "That's enough for the day, Saer."

The blonde girl, trying to figure out what she'd done wrong, looked up at him, wide-eyed. "But I don't have it yet!"

He smiled at her, picking up the short staff she'd dropped and moving over to place it in its rack. "I told you that you would not get it the first time. Don't be so hard on yourself."

She made a face at him, standing. "But-!"

"You did exceptionally well," he interrupted. "I didn't expect you to do so well your first time."

She beamed at him, and he thought that if she'd had enough energy left to do so, she'd be jumping up and down. "Really!"

He nodded, knowing that she'd have to work hard to learn to calm her emotions. But that was later—it would come with meditation. "Yes. This method will take much longer to learn than conventional meditation, but you are progressing much faster than I initially thought you would."

It was odd, he thought, that she was progressing quickly—must faster, in fact, than he cared to admit. He could already feel the tell-tale signs of a Force bond between them, even without the control of meditation that was required to master the Force. This could mean something; although the girl seemed brash and impulsive, and she must have quickly grown impatient with the techniques Vash was trying to teach her, when there was a weapon in her hands she was calm and ready, waiting for further instruction.

She grinned, looking for all the world like she was walking on air. "Same time tommorrow?"

He smiled down at her. "Sounds like fun."


End file.
